FR Amazon Rank watch

[Edge]

Currently sitting at #104 overall, and #2 in Fantasy.

Pretty good, but I want to see it in the top 100!

[Edge]

Now at #118 overall - but #1 in Fantasy.

Link to Amazon's Fatal Revenant page

By the way, is anyone else vaguely offended that Amazon is trying to get you to buy FR together with a Terry Goodkind book?

[emotional leper]

By the way, is anyone else vaguely offended that Amazon is trying to get you to buy FR together with a Terry Goodkind book?

I'm offended they carry Goodkind.

[Vain]

What does the ranking translate to in terms of total sold?

[I'm Murrin]

Amazon doen't release that kind of info.

[Vain]

I've seen an application that actually gave that info - but that was over a year ago and I can't remember where it was

[I'm Murrin]

I did a quick google search, and according to this page a rank between 100-200 (where FR has been hovering) is about 50-80 books sold per day. Another site says 225-249 per week, which is lower (about 30 a day).

[Marv]

Wow! Bergs did a pretty good write up. If people weren't sure whether to start reading the final series of books his review should convince them.

[Edge]

Sitting at #113 overall - and still #1 in Fantasy!

Tell me, does Berg's review have any spoilers in it? I'd like to read it, but I don't have my copy of FR yet, and I'm trying to avoid anything at all spoilery.

[I'm Murrin]

The review has some references to what happens in the first two chapters. (Essentially, just saying who Linden talks to and why.) Other than that, it's clean.

[Edge]

Hmmm, #120 overall now, and #2 in Fantasy.

And thanks, Murrin - Burgs wrote a pretty good review.

[lucimay]

Wow! Bergs did a pretty good write up. If people weren't sure whether to start reading the final series of books his review should convince them.

Right ON!! you ROCK burgs! and shall be reprinted here:

By Todd Burger (Chicago)

**NO Fatal Revenant spoilers in this review.**

There were some (not me) who thought The Runes of the Earth (ROTE) was not all it could be, and by extension thought The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were a disappointment. I want to address those Doubting Thomas's first.

Donaldson raises the stakes so high in Fatal Revenant (FR) that it was difficult, at times, to wonder how he was going to pull it off. I'll be honest: I doubted that he could do it, and I'm a true, dedicated (not obsessive, thank you) fan. However, after turning the final page of FR and sadly setting the book aside, I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that my ability to express my emotions and thoughts had been significantly diminished. Rational cogitation evaded me entirely, and I felt like the teenager I was when I first stumbled on Donaldson in the early 1980s (gulp). All that ran through my mind, in a continuous loop, and for about five minutes was, "Dude! This is awesome!" And it was. It is. I hold Donaldson to a higher standard than most writers, because he's earned it. Not only did he meet meet my already inflated expectations, he by far exceeded them. To say that I'm anxiously awaiting the third book is like saying that as a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, I really want them to win a World Series. (The third book will likely arrive first...*sigh*)

So, to those disappointed by ROTE, to those unsure as to whether you want to continue reading, I say: READ! THIS! BOOK!

***If you haven't read ROTE, please skip the next paragraph. (You really shouldn't need this warning anyway, should you? You know better. <grin> )***

At the end of ROTE, Linden Avery discerned six figures riding to Revelstone. "One was Jeremiah; her son beyond question... The other stranger was unmistakably Thomas Covenant." If you're a fan, you've been waiting three years to find out how or why Jeremiah seemingly regained control of his mind, and why Covenant is corporeal (he's supposed to be dead, after all).

Donaldson will answer your questions, and the answers will stagger and satisfy you, and leave you gasping for more. In typical Donaldson fashion - and something he's been getting better and better at over the years - the answers, or solutions to the problems, aren't what they seem. Nothing is. Hellfire <wink> - Covenant, alive? Jeremiah, talkative and energetic? Surely this is impossible.

The book opens with Linden facing a corporeal Covenant, and a responsive Jeremiah. Please: Read the first few chapters carefully. Don't speed through them in a mad desperate dash to start the marathon run to the finish, because if you do, several events leading up to the ending, and the ending itself (Donaldson has become, I daresay, the master of the cliffhanger) might not make a bit of sense to you. For that matter, the entire book should be read carefully. After finishing this book I see more and more why Donaldson thought that he needed to take time away and work on other projects before coming back to this. Most fantasies - his First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant included - are fairly straightforward in their presentation. That's why The First Chronicles had such a broad appeal. They most certainly were not simple - when you scratched the surface, there was surprising depth - but you could, at thirteen years of age, read the books and fully enjoy them without looking into the vast abyss of nuance Donaldson wrote with. While I don't want to say that young readers should be wary of these books, they have layers and layers of subtlety and subtext. I expected Donaldson to write a book that made me think, but I wasn't expecting to be addled and befuddled, and I just want to say THANK YOU to SRD for writing a book that that caused so much cerebration.

Linden needs answers. The Demondim are at Revelstone's gate. The Mahdoubt is nowhere to be found. Covenant and Jeremiah are too foreign for her to trust completely, and so Esmer is her only resource. His duality often prohibits him from speaking clearly, and his aid often creates more problems than it solves. The book starts out with a simple (yeah, right) quest, and her companions are two who should bring more delight to her than any: Covenant and Jeremiah. But they do not, because she cannot physically touch them, something she longs to do, for reasons I'll let Donaldson dramatize. But imagine Linden's grief. After ten years in the "real world", and several audacious days in the Land (ROTE), Covenant and Jeremiah stand before her, restored. The only man she ever loved, and her son.

Essentially, this book is about the choices she makes. Perhaps she was dubbed "The Chosen" for more reasons than we know.

SELECTED VERBOSITY

I feel the need to address some reviewers concerns regarding ROTE, if only because I wouldn't want those reviews to dissuade someone from reading it and, thus, this book. Addressing those here is germane to the topic at hand, I believe, for reasons that should become obvious. Some reviews have said that The Last Chronicles suffer from original, inventive characters like Pitchwife or Saltheart Foamfollower, and they have said that this is a detriment to the series. I would argue with that. First, we know that this is a time travel story. To think that we won't go back in time and meet some folks we've been aching to meet for the past seven books wouldn't be logical. I'm not saying that we will, mind you, I'm just saying that the likelihood (and I thought the same before reading ROTE) is pretty darn good. Second, remember that Donaldson's mind is fertile (the Amnion, anyone?). Do we really think that the only characters that we will encounter are the ones we've met in ROTE? After satisfying first books in his first and second Covenant series, Lord Foul's Bane and The Wounded Land, respectively, he introduced us to people, races and creatures that left us in awe of his creative muscle. In the Illearth War, he gave us Hile Troy, Elena, and Amok. In The One Tree we had the Elohim, Kasreyn, and the Sandgorgons. Think back to how brilliantly Donaldson's world opened up to us.

Have faith. You will be well rewarded.

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant began with Donaldson setting the pieces on the board with great care. Since the First Chronicles, Donaldson's writing has at times reminded me of a chess master. While he is not plodding, as one reviewer here wrote of ROTE, he is meticulous in the placement of his pieces. When I finished reading The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict, the first book of his five-book space opera, The Gap Series, I couldn't see how he was going to get five books out of it and frankly really didn't care about reading the next book, Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision. Yet he did get five books out of that, and the universe that he unveiled to his grateful readers was breathtaking in its conceptual amplitude. It was like being inside the tiniest Russian doll, and escaping, to find that there's a larger doll, then a larger doll, etc., and finally you escape and you're in, well, Russia. Maybe not as exciting as warm and inviting as Hawaii, but you get the idea.

I don't want to say much more about the plot or happenings of the book, other than this: When I first read it, I was frustrated through several parts. Donaldson, who seemed to have laid off the ten dollar words more than usual in ROTE, found some new ones to introduce here, and I found myself scrambling for a dictionary more than I cared to. There was one sentence in particular that made me scream, because I had to use *two* dictionaries to get through it. I didn't mark the sentence, and can't find it now, but I remember one of the words: chrysoprase. That was one of four similarly "difficult" words in that sentence. A sentence that I did make note of is this: "Its {...} had become a blackness as deep as ebony or fuligin." Fuligin wasn't in an Oxford dictionary I consulted, but I found it in Encarta's dictionary, and it's defined thus: 1. sooty: having the color or consistency of soot or smoke, 2. obscure: like soot in cloudiness or obscurity.

I suppose that an argument could be made that #2 adds some dimension to the definition, but I'm not sure - especially as fuligin isn't a common ten dollar word.

The title itself contains such a word. Revenant isn't in Encarta's dictionary, but was in the Oxford dictionary I consulted. "Revenant, noun, a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead." Know anyone that fits the bill?

Although Donaldson is often criticized for his use of language, and I'm somewhat criticizing him now, I want you to remember this: he picks and chooses his words carefully. Even the "small" words. Read carefully what he writes in this book, and pay close attention to what he has already written.

I've read everything Donaldson has ever written (and he may have used the words I mentioned above, but they're not words I would be likely to remember), and have come to love his work despite what I consider to be some of his flaws. Namely, the overuse of ten dollar words, and his main characters (not side characters) experiencing their emotions to the greatest degree possible. It's never just pain, it's searing, blinding, knee-buckling, stomach-wrenching, teeth-pulling torture - and sometimes rape. However those are, to me, small prices to pay for the greater reward: his vision. I've learned to trust Donaldson over the years, and if he believes in his work, I believe in him. He is loyal to his vision, has never been a sellout (or he would have written these books twenty years ago and have long since retired on the royalties), and he holds himself to a higher standard than any of his critics. For that I admire him.

Regarding the "sameness" of everything. Why are the Haruchai still the Haruchai? Why is Foul still around? The Ramen? The Ranyhyn? Shouldn't things have changed in the Land? Why hasn't technology replaced "magic"? After all, it's been about seven (?) thousand years since Thomas Covenant first appeared. And what about this Linden character? Isn't she annoying?

Foul is still around because he can't be killed. We know this. The power required to kill him - even were it possible - would break the Arch of Time, and that would fulfill Foul's plans nicely. As to the races - well, realize that the Land itself is a very small area, and it's fairly well secluded. It shouldn't be terribly surprising that things are still so similar. I'd agree with someone if they argued that things don't need to be so exact. For example, Mithil Stonedown is still Mithil Stonedown. In seven thousand years (granted, different world, different rules) what's Chicago going to look like? What did Chicago, for that matter, look like seven thousand years ago.

With regard to technology, that's really the easiest issue to deal with. Necessity breeds invention. If you have magic, and it provides everything you need, then hasn't necessity been taken out of the picture? Without need, there is no desire to explore any further than with what you have already. How many thousands of years did people live on this, our Earth, with the only answers available to them, and the only answers required by them, provided by their religion/mythology?

About Linden. There's a "group" who call themselves THOOLAH, The Holy Order of Linden Avery Haters. It's a bit extreme for me. I understand that Donaldson's characters aren't always likeable (Covenant's first act in the land in Lord Foul's Bane was to rape a girl), but that's kind of the point. Would you rather be reading about morally altruistic characters like Richard and Kahlan from Goodkind's universe? If so, that's great, no harm done. But I prefer my characters to not only have grey spots on their morality gauge, I like them to be *real*. Whine all you want about *Linden's* whining (regarding her son), but find me a mother that wouldn't be doing and thinking and struggling *exactly* as she is. Good luck. (I mean no offense to THOOLAH members, or anyone who simply doesn't like Linden, and while I don't care for Goodkind's work at all, I mean no offense to his fans either.)


If you'll indulge me in a final burst of verbosity:

When I saw the cover art for Fatal Revenant - the main image, a figure of a wizardly-looking chap bearded and robed in snowy white - I cringed. It was bad enough that Del Rey tried to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings movies by releasing mass market paperback editions of The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant with pastel covers displaying a *yellow* gold wedding ring. (They hoped that the new readers of fantasy that the LOTR movies gave birth to would see a gold ring while perusing the shelves at their local bookstore, and think, Hey! I need to read this Tolkien knock-off - which it most certainly is not.) The problem there is that our buddy Tom wore a *white* gold wedding ring, and it is the nature of the alloy of white gold that formed the paradox of "white wild magic gold" in the Land. Now we are treated to what looks to me, and probably every fan of fantasy extant, Gandalf the White or, as depicted in the films, perhaps the figure more closely resembles Saruman. Let me reassure you that neither Gandalf nor Saruman appear in this or any other Covenant book. Who is it then? I'm not saying, but even a casual reader of the Covenant series should be able to make a good guess.

Happy Reading. Donaldson himself said that we would be going on a ride. I am more anxious, now, given how high he has raised the stakes, to see the third book than I was this one. The next three years will go very slowly.

bravo burgs! great essay!!!

[aliantha]

Yup yup, certainly would've encouraged me to buy a copy (if I didn't already have one)!

[SleeplessOne]

My God, I still have to wait until Monday/Tuesday at the very earliest for this book to be released at my local bookstore chain, I am going utterly insane with anticipation - great review Burgs, managed to whet my appetite even further without giving anything away

[dlbpharmd]

I have a friend who is vacationing somewhere in Florida. I loaned him 1st and 2nd Chronicles a couple of years ago, but he still hasn't read ROTE. He went into a Books A Million but they only had FR. In fact, that's the ONLY SRD book that they had.

[Menolly]

He asked someone on staff, dlb? We have two Books-a-Million here, and they carry all of TCTC, but the shelving system is odd.

[dlbpharmd]

Yes, he asked for help and that's what he was told. In fact, the clerk told him at first that they did not carry any books by SRD, but then FR turned up.

[Menolly]

Good G-ds...

[Edge]

Today, #124 overall, and #4 in Fantasy.

Customer rating: 5 stars - though that's based on only 3 reviews. How about those of you who've read it getting some more reviews up there, hmmm? Especially as after viewing this item, 6% of people bought The Elves of Cintra (The Genesis of Shannara, Book 2) by Terry Brooks. And to call that a travesty is understatement.

[Edge]

Now #117 overall and #4 in Fantasy