If you admit that he's not writing the same story every time, and that's the basis of your rationalization that it was "okay" for him to diverge from the expectation that Covenant "needed to carry something back with him," [connecting the story back to reality, I assume], then I'm confused by your attempts to say that there weren't sufficient differences this time to justify the complaints some of our expectations being undermined. In fact, your argument thus far seems to have been aimed at denying the significance or even the existence of major differences in how this story unfolded. I've even expressed my confusion, asking how people could fail to see these differences. But suddenly the fact that he's not "writing the same story" seems significant enough for you to it to justify yet another defense of the Last Chronicles.wayfriend wrote:I had also proposed that one of the purposes of Linden Avery in the Second Chronicles was to carry something back that Covenant could not, and thus meet the requirement.
And that, in the Final Chronicles, Donaldson had the license to forgo the requirement because he had already established sufficient connection. After all, he by admission doesn't like to write the same story every time.
Just to be clear: you ARE admitting there are signficant changes this time, right? If so, it's good to get agreement at least on this one point. Perhaps we can build from there.
One glaring difference this time is that fact that Donaldson is no longer concerned with "carrying something back," in your words, which is the very subject of this thread. But it's no longer sufficient to say that Linden serves this purpose, because she's now just part of the process of leaving behind the real world. If carrying something back was so important that we needed the addition of a new real-world character to perform this duty, why wouldn't it be also important now?