The Runes of the Earth; Part 2, Chapter 12: Find Me

[wayfriend]

The problem with Runes, IMO, is that it reads like a long prologue and doesnlt give usmuch info, not even the real danger this time around.

Precisely!

[tonyz]

I think that we have here yet another example that Linden is in over her head. She promises Anele shelter despite knowing nothing of him, nor of his pursuers, nor their reasons, and while I think that one of Donaldson's lessons is that we should not scorn the promptings of the heart, the parallel with Linden denying Roger the release of Joan is too obvious: she gets into trouble by promising things she can't possibly deliver.

She's making it up as she goes along (one wonders how she ever got to running a hospital if she's this bad at planning), and the different justifications are Linden's own reasons for why she wants him along, when in fact she has none and knows that she needs some. So she makes them up on the spot.

[Zarathustra]

. . . the parallel with Linden denying Roger the release of Joan is too obvious: she gets into trouble by promising things she can't possibly deliver.

Yeah, it's so obvious that I didn't even notice it! Good call. This pattern does seem to define her decisions. It's right there from the very beginning. You could throw Jeremiah in there, too. She's always in the role of protecting a helpless, consciousness-impaired "weakling" who actually has more power than they explicitly reveal. Jeremiah. Joan. Anele. Covenant even played this role for a while in TOT. This can't be a coincidence.

[wayfriend]

... but that's a GOOD THING! Remember, Donaldson's creedo (or one of them) is that it's not about whether you win or lose, it's about standing up and fighting for what you believe in.

Linden makes the choices she needs to make to be true to herself. It doesn't matter if she can't possibly succeed. Making other choices, and hating herself afterwards, is the worst path. That's the path to despite.

[Relayer]

I agree with you guys, Linden is WAY over her head, and she does have this thing for "helpless" people. I've argued elsewhere the same point about Anele -- why does she give him 100% support and protection before she knows anything about him?

But I have to point out that in the case of both Joan and Jeremiah, Linden has followed through on her promises. The hospital runs smoothly. A doctor doesn't generally plan on their patients being abducted at gunpoint. It's not like she caved in to Roger's demands... she knows the law and sticks to it. And there's only so much any parent can do to protect their children.

Sure, on the day it happened, she had some clues, but she just didn't think Roger would go that far to get what he wanted. Up until that day, she'd done a good job. And she trusted her instincts enough to call Megan Roman, her friends who could keep watch on the hospital, even Sheriff Lytton.

[Zarathustra]

Good points. I agree with Wayfriend that this is a good thing. I've just never given the pattern much thought before. The fact that the pattern goes all the way back to TOT with Covenant must mean something to the overall plot. We're dealing with a story of a man who goes into a "coma" and enters a Land which may or may not be all in his mind. Then along comes a doctor who goes into this Land with him, and assumes the role of Healer of this Land (which may or may not be his mind in a "coma"). And then once he dies, she does the same thing for others, from the outside. She assumes the role of healer for people who are not fully living in this world.

I'm not sure what this means, but it feels important.

[wayfriend]

"Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all."

She's a doctor. And, in this series, a mother. Her motherhood will be a critical factor in this story, I agree, and Runes touches this point enough to confirm this, just as the last series touched on her healing. So, yes, I expect she'll be doing a lot of doctoring and mothering at this point, and that this will be a significant aspect of the story's plotline.

(Which, come to think of it, gives the Mahdoubt some more possibilities ...)

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Relayer, you keep making very good points. I was thinking about Vain, too, when I wrote my posts. Why didn't Vain both me in a similar way? He obviously wasn't much of a character--but I loved him as a character. Weird.

Actually, I liked the brazen way that Donaldson didn't constantly justify Vain's presence. Donaldson presented Vain's rationale once, and then stepped back and "dared" us to accept it. That took balls. It reeked of confidence. But Donaldson's multiple justifications now imply uncertainty and lack of confidence. The mystery of Anele doesn't feel like it has a definitive answer like Vain did.

But Anele certainly couldn't have been given the "Vain treatment" all over again. Readers would complain that it's just like Vain. And I disagree with you that the only other option would be to leave him out until he's needed. If his reasons for being there didn't feel ad hoc, they wouldn't bother me. I think all my complaints would vanish if we were shown why, specifically, Linden thinks he's necessary to find Jeremiah. Or why, specifically, she thinks he is the key to saving the Land. With Vain, we knew he had a purpose, though that purpose was intentionally hidden. We knew he had a purpose because he was made for a purpose. With Anele, all we have are the words of a crazy man, and the hunches of an emotional woman.

I think that Donaldson did Anele right when he revealed him to be the son of Sunder and Hollian. This was Anele's best moment. It was powerful and enlightening. We learn what he lost, and how badly it affected him. He was important (at one time) because of who he was and what he inherited. But those issues aren't important any more. So Donaldson has to invent new ones. It would be like Vain fulfilling his purpose, and yet still hanging around waiting to fulfill his purpose (if that were possible--since his "purpose" was to turn into the Staff).

I appreciate that Anele is a mystery. I just don't like how his mystery is handled. Vain is one way to do it right. Linden is another. We learned about her motivations early on--chapter 1 of TWL. But we didn't learn the mystery of those motivations until TOT. This is a strange mix of certainty and uncertainty: we know she committed murder, but we don't know how horrible and intimate it actually was, and how her parents were involved. What we know and what we don't know were linked in a logical, necessary way that didn't feel like Donaldson was making it up all along, and revising it along the way.

Oh well, I guess I've gone on long enough on this issue. Really, it's just a matter of my own personal taste. I suppose it doesn't bother anyone else.

I wasn't convinced by 97% of the book. I agree with you 100% on all of this, and though the following arguements had valid points, overall it just didn't add up, didn't sync for me...it all felt contrived. Explinations aren't enough, you shouldn't have to delve this deep for it too make sense, the writer should be able to make it make sense, at least most of it or the primary issues. I think SRD wrote the book from an idea/concept standpoint and made things work based on what he wanted to do with the last two books, and that's why things don't quite work, he got sequelitis, just like the Wachowski Bros did.

[Loresraat]

I still feel like a lot of this has to do with being from Linden's POV. Now she and (as far as we know) she alone is responsible for playing Savior. To live up to her responsibilities--which she knows are too big for an ordinary mortal--she does what any of us would do: she goes back to what she considers her basic strengths. She's a doctor, someone who uses their analytical talents to diagnose problems. She's trying to use that analytical mind to navigate her way through the Land's newest crisis. (eg, see how many times she tries to question Esmer and he's ticked because she's "not even asking the right question"). The problem is, that this is *the Land*. This is a world that doesn't obey all our rules, and it is a world where you are manifestly weakest where you think yourself strong and you discover yourself strong where you thought yourself weakest. Analysis is not going to cut it, here. It obfuscates instead of clarifying, and I think SRD is trying to give us a taste of the futility Linden is confronting. I could be wrong, but that's how I'm seeing it right now.