Moderators: Orlion, kevinswatch
Wayfriend wrote:Eh? Which White Gold Weilder did you read?Landroval wrote:... it delivers such a fantastic payoff. (It's a pity The White Gold Wielder couldn't receiprocate in this respect - I was expecting so much).
When & where is it?(UR-MONKEY, COME TO THE UK MEET-UP!)
Thank you for those kind words, outlander. Not sure I deserve such praise, as there are other Watchers here more eloquent than me.outlander wrote:Excellent post mm i think you perfectly captured the essence of TIW.
)I think Elena put the moral question involved very well: the choice between a dead service and a living one. Bannor had to choose between obeying Kevin's wishes and helping the New Lords defend the Land. Actually, I'm fairly sure Kevin would have approved of the idea at the time. (Nobody could then have guessed the mad use Elena would make of the Power of Command.) After all, Amok himself, who was the Seventh Ward, chose to return even though the Lords had not mastered the first six Wards.SoulBiter wrote:Yes there was much betrayal... In some ways I think Bannor betrayed Kevin. He knew that Kevin had no wish to to have the 7th ward fall into unready hands.. and yet, he gave up the name of it.
But more, too. The Bloodguard have a specific stance on lore. They don't partake of it, they don't support it, and particularly they don't trust it. To them, it is a weapon that they eschew. They only serve those who weild it. Therefore the Bloodguard approved of Kevin's hiding of the Wards.Variol Farseer wrote:I think Elena put the moral question involved very well: the choice between a dead service and a living one. Bannor had to choose between obeying Kevin's wishes and helping the New Lords defend the Land. Actually, I'm fairly sure Kevin would have approved of the idea at the time. (Nobody could then have guessed the mad use Elena would make of the Power of Command.) After all, Amok himself, who was the Seventh Ward, chose to return even though the Lords had not mastered the first six Wards.
So when Banner was not only choosing between serving Kevin or Elena. He was choosing between aiding in the acquisition of a lore - which he did not trust - and supporting the protections that Kevin set up - which he did trust. In naming the Power, he was going against every Haruchai instinct in his makeup.In [u]The Illearth War[/u], Banner wrote:"Ur-Lord, we have seen the Desecration. We have seen the fruit of perilous lore. Lore is not knowledge. Lore is a weapon, a sword or spear. The Bloodguard have no use for weapons. Any knife may turn and wound the hand which wields it. Yet the Lords desire lore. They do work of value with it. Therefore we do not resist it, though we do not touch it or serve it or save it.
"High Lord Kevin made his Wards to preserve his lore - and to lessen the peril that his weapons might fall into unready hands. This we approve. We are the Bloodguard. We do not speak of lore. We speak only of what we know."
Taking the books individually, TIW is my fave. Saying that, my most fave parts of TCTC occur in other books.Yes, folks, but tell us WHY you loved The Illearth War. How did it capture your imagination? I agree that it remains, in its way, the greatest of the Covenant books, so I'm not afraid to spout excessive verbiage about it.
The first time that I read TCTC, The Illearth War had the biggest emotional impact of the three books. Its cataclysmic end had left me in a daze. No other TC book began with so much promise for victory, and no other TC book ended with so much hope shattered. Lord Foul's Bane got me hooked on SRD's world; with TIW SRD secured my loyalty forever.
As noted by Jemcheeta in another thread, TIW was a story that began on a positive note--at least for the Land's citizens, if not Covenant himself. TIW really was like a movie with a cast of thousands. In no other book (so far) did the Land seem so potent with the possibilities of Earthpower, and so alive with defenders: the Council of Lords expanded and in possession of the Staff of Law; both the Warward and the Loresraat expanded hugely; Revelwood created; Loric's krill awakened, and consequently Amok awakened--both heralds of the Old Lords' power.
With all these forces allied against Lord Foul, TIW at first seemed to promise a very heroic tale. Then with every passing chapter, TIW spiralled downward into an emotional abyss--and a literal abyss in the depths of Melenkurion Skyweir.
But before that the Forestal of Garrotting Deep came in and stole the show. Caerroil Wildwood inspired awe the moment the reader came across him. He saved the collective ass of the Warward, slew Fleshharrower, completely annihilated the Giant-Raver's army, and destroyed a piece of the Illearth Stone like it was nothing to him. Wildwood represented a level of Earthpower deeper and more ancient than anything seen before in the Land (except maybe the Fire-Lions).
Back on the human scale of things, the heart of TIW was the entangled relationship around Covenant, Elena, Trell and Troy. If this wasn't an epic fantasy, it would be a soap opera, what with these quirky, deranged, or damaged personalities running around.
I also thought the parallel storylines of Troy/Mhoram/Warward and Covenant/Elena/Amok and the way they converged in the end was very well done by SRD.
If I could sum up TIW in one word, that word would be Betrayal. Yes, there is always betrayal of one kind or another happening throughout the Chronicles, but TIW by itself seems like a litany of betrayals. Examples:
-Covenant betrayed by his private bargain with an unwitting Elena
-Elena betrayed by her blind hatred of Foul
-Hile Troy betrayed by his blind faith--in Elena and his own war plan
-Kevin careful design for his Wards betrayed by Morin's revelation of the "password" to the Seventh Ward; Kevin himself betrayed by Elena's blind faith in his ability to fight Foul.
And so on. I might even go so far as to say that Elena or the Land itself--or the mad dream in his mind--betrayed Covenant, in that his summoning, just as Joan was on the phone, deprived him of a chance to reconcile with her. Their unresolved estrangement would come back to bite them in TWL, of course. (Okay, so Joan was doing the biting.)
So, nothing really deep, folks. Just explaining why I find TIW so compelling.
Crash! Those chapters were painful to read the first time, especially when contrasted with the wonder and glory of Mhoram's. A lot of WGW was really hard to read, for the same reasons. Maybe I just didn't like Covenant back then ) Sure, he made some horrible errors, but at least he believes, and is willing to take risks to fight for what he loves.
as Stonemaybe saidNo other TC book began with so much promise for victory, and no other TC book ended with so much hope shattered
