If time is a loop, as is being suggested, and the White Gold can control time....

...could the Arch of Time BE the white gold ring?

Just a thought.

Lord Foul has obviously watched Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

'Too late, evil dude. After we beat you, we went back in time and took all the bullets out of your gun' was the general thought IIRC

Does he not later tell Linden that he took her son?

Is it possible that the dead person who arrives at the end was raised by the Demondin with the power of the Illearth Stone? If so he would be as corrupted as Elena was. One has to ask where they got the body from? Did the Giants bring it back to Revelstone?

Worse, could that person BE Demondin?

It would be interesting to know just what this fire in the earth is which Kastenessen was appointed to cap all those years ago. Could it be something to do with the Caesures?

My own thought about the Mahdoubt is that she's benign, but how she came to be hasn't been explained yet.

I think so too. IIRC Donaldson has said she is what she appears to be - a sly tribute to the Shadout Mapes from Dune.

CovenantJr wrote:I doubt everything Foul ever says. We can't assume he's ever telling the truth.

Can you name an example of a factual lie he's told? Maybe he has - I'm so unfamiliar with these books having not read them in many years, but it seems to me that he always had too much contempt and pride to lie.

Maybe Kevin's Dirt is what the Sunbane was like in its early stages. Maybe it is something like the way the power of the Illearth stone was brought across from before TC destroyed it. Foul, who I doubt lies, more or less said the Elohim created the Dirt, and that he needed Linden free of it to do h...

CovenantJr wrote: we know the Creator can't even act in the Land, much less go there in person, without destroying the Arch and freeing Foul.

Perhaps that's the point.

Jeremiah is a prophet of apocalypse in the bible jeru.huji.ac.il/eb35s.htm But if time is to be a recurring Mobius Loop within the Land then he could well be someone from the early history of the land such as Berek. But he's much more likely to be the Creator, perhaps in an embryonic state. He might...

That it might be the arch of time is inspired and surely true, but who is Jeremiah? If his mind has been bodilessly in the land all these years then where has it been and who might he really be to know of these places? It may be that SD has left name clues. Liand is very similar to Linden and they w...

But has anyone else noticed that SRD's writing style has changed???? There is some belief that this is a deliberate reflection of the content of the book. As Kevin's Dirt and her obsession blinds Linden to the Land and her own lack of wisdom, so are the readers likewise blinded to the beauty of wha...

Oh it's Covenant alright. You can be sure of that. Unhelpful dead oozing corruption Covenant wanting his ring back, probably, but not much change from how he usually is in that case. And let's not forget that his wife and son are abroad, causing havoc. He'll be drawn back by his inflexible loyalty t...

Although I find it quite hard to respect fantasy horses, I think you guys are onto a wider theme here. The unquestioning obeissance accorded to Linden by earthpower groupies is IMHO going to be heavily called into question as this chronicle goes on.

Yet even in the first trilogy, he could have allowed his anger and hatred towards Foul ("He laughs at lepers") to cause a conflagration of wild magic that could have rent the Arch of Time

iirc it required the venom to heighten his might to make him powerful enough to do that.

foul might not have been that strong... because the Staff was hidden... and because there is no Staff from the day Linden recovered it to the day Linden brought it back to her current time; Foul could heal and grow stronger because the Staff isn't there... I think it's absolutely clear that this is...

But until Berek discovered it, I don't think it was actively used. And then he ran off and made the first Staff of Law, which probably helped Foul recover even more. After that there was an explosion of Earthpower use. I strongly suspect that the major theme of the next few books will be all about ...

Spoiler-heavy but very positive fan review on Usenet at

groups.google.com/groups?q=runes+of+the+earth&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=y8KdnbmInPtq69bcRVn-tw%40nildram.net&rnum=3

stuartfanning wrote:This is for anyone who has a copy of Runes of the Earth. Is there a new map of the land in it, or is the previous one used again?

There's no map at all in my proof copy. It says 'Map to come'

Those of you who have read the book in ARC form could speak better to this. Are my thoughts similar to your reading experience of it in ARC form? I think it remains the case, more or less. I note that there is a certain amount of, for want of a better word teleportation around the place where long ...