Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
https://kevinswatch.com/phpBB3/
No, you are not alone Turiya!Turiya Foul wrote:Oh, so no one thought Hile Troy told the story well?So everyone hates Hile Troy?
I thought Troy's POV was really good - especially the way his character grew and changed the more pressure he, and his plans, were put under.Skyweir wrote:I personally prefer the story to be told through TC's eyes .. because he is so conflicted and torn .. he brings great interest .. great frustration .. great irritation .. and the greatest opportunity for empathy into the story .. imho ..
I came away from TCTC really feeling something for this miserable guy .. and for the first time ever I even appreciated him .. what he had to endure and how much he gave ..
I love Mhoram .. his language and respectfulness of his speech .. but his pov would be quite limited imho .. his experience not as varied as Covenants .. in that he hadnt been through hell .. and come to paradise .. and hadnt known the torment of what TC had lost ..
I completely agree with every last thing you said, Skyweir. Sure, through Mhoram's POV it would be pretty cool, but he's not an anti-hero like TC is most of the time and he hasn't suffered as much. Bannor is cool, too, but think about it. The Haruchai's complete inability to express their emotions outwardly would block the passion of which TC speaks with so often. (BTW, just something I'm pondering... do the Haruchai express their emotions inwardly at all or when they're thinking to themselves or anything like that?) Well, TC would be my first pick anyday... 
W.B. wrote:Though seeing the Land through Mhoram's eyes--with compassion, humor, humanity--is a pleasure, I liked Covenant's POV best, because that's whose viewpoint the series started with, so that became the baseline for me. It's also interesting because Covenant is so obviously a coflicted and possibly unreliable POV character, but also a very intellegent one. He thinks conceptually, sees not just details but how the details fit into a whole schematic, grasps the essentials of how Foul operates, and realizes the implications of his discoveries. So often his revelations are thought-provoking, and I think his discoveries about such things as the efficacy of guilt and power and the way he comes to his response to despair illuminate many themes.
I think it's also essential to understand the whole "leper's morality" that he has to live by (placing one's most basic physical safety and control over everything else: feelings, imagination, dreams) in order to "get" his character, and his POV is the way a reader comes to some kind of understanding. It wasn't until a few chapters into LFB, when you start to see how that morality affects Covenant's concerns and considerations in the Land, that I started to feel more sympathy/empathy for the character. When viewed through others' POVs, especially Troy's and Linden's, he seems (even more
Which brings me to Linden. I didn't hate her or anything of that nature, but I was least satisfied when the story was told from her POV. Aside from her disturbing suicide-bedeviled past, for me I think the resistance I had to her POV was that, having spent three novels investing effort and getting inside Covenant's head, which is not always easy or pleasant, and which requires coming to an understanding of some of the basic rules that govern his life, having to undergo the entire process again for Linden was hard to swallow.
I think Linden is a little less accessible, since her story comes out in a piecemeal fashion you spend a good chunk of time not knowing her motivations and psychoses, and her past is maybe even darker than Covenant's pre-Land experiences. Though he's unlikable in many ways, I ended up liking Covenant by the end of the First Chronicles. Though often he did the exact opposite of what I would have thought he would, or wanted him to have done, you spend so much time hearing his thoughts, you come to understand, if not concur, with his actions. This is part of what I liked about the Chronicles, their way of thwarting expectations and frustrating the reader, but doing so in an ultimately satisfying way. So, that given, it's not surprising that the Second Chronicles didn't spend all its narrative on Covenant's POV, which is what one might expect them conventionally to do.
Perhaps, after more re-readings (and with the publication of the Third/Last Chronicles--which seem inevitably to entail more Linden, and maybe other, new characters, and less Covenant), with the Second Chronicles story more fixed in my head, Linden will come to be a more agreeable POV character, as Covenant did as the First Chronicles progressed. But, because he's the original, I still think he's the best.
