I don't want to read this book anymore~

[Skyweir]

Lena, in offering him compassion, becomes the focus of that anger. Consider the sentence: Quote:

For an instant, he stared at her, at her high, perfect breasts and her short slip, with grim triumph in his eyes, as though he had just exposed some foul plot.
What is that foul plot? What is conspiring to destroy him? Health. The Land threatens him with its 'illusion' of health. Lena herself - because she is young, and beautiful, and healthy and wholesome and trusting, not only highlights all he has lost, but also threatens his sanity.

brilliant!! .. an astute question and answer .. yes health is the very aspect he felt threatened by ..

Knowing how real the threat of insanity is to him makes any notion of health sense unpalitable to his rational mind.

And that's the point at which, experiencing potency of many kinds for the first time in a long time, he loses all sense of what he is actually doing, and forgets Lena in his angry, selfish, eagerness to feel that power and passion.

yes i agree and yet .. there is even a sense of disconnectedness from that reality which easily identify .. I am not sure he 'forgets' Lena .. as within that moment .. that dream time seeming moment .. he is prepared to disregard her in his pursuit of that "selfish eagerness to [experience] that power and passion"

Donaldson wanted you to be bothered greatly

exactly ..

wonderful insight rivenrock .. a real pleasure to read ..

[Rivenrock]

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[Blue_Spawn]

I was able to forgive Covenant Chrons because the scene was an actual plot-dependent element. If it hadn't actually affected the story, I probably would stop reading it.

As for these gruesome scenes you speak of in the Gap series (although I've never read it): one possible explanation is often that the author was going through a harsh time period, or had an agitated mind set. Literature is a form of art, and art is an expression of the human mind. I think the author's primary goal in most stories to make you feel the way he feels. Only problem, as you have indicated, is not to over-step the limit to a point where the reader wants to stop completely.