Kevin's Watch

well last night i finished the book and all i can say is wow. so many sides, so many agendas going on. but i cant help but hate linden at the moment.

illender wrote:well last night i finished the book and all i can say is wow. so many sides, so many agendas going on. but i cant help but hate linden at the moment.

Wayfriend will want to have a little chat with you. He/she thinks Linden Avery can do no wrong.

Ow. Ow. I've been wounded.

Welcome to the far side, illender. Where we make the next three years more tolerable by endlessly debating what the heck just happened.

Even with all that power, Linden still needs Covenent to get the job done. Never mind that the guy has done it twice already and has been dead for five thousand years. More reason why i'm not a fan of hers.

Toolah forever!

StarRider wrote:Even with all that power, Linden still needs Covenent to get the job done. Never mind that the guy has done it twice already and has been dead for five thousand years. More reason why i'm not a fan of hers.

Toolah forever!

You forgot the "H." We're holy, after all.

That book was awesome!

Linden holds too much power. Probably she also broke the Arch summoning TC.

Cheers!

Giantfriend wrote: Linden holds too much power. Probably she also broke the Arch summoning TC.

I don't care if she destroys the whole damn world, I still think she's awesome.

But yes, FR was incredible. The next three years waiting until AATE comes out is going to be torture.

I agree it's going to be tough waiting. Honestly it would be easier without Kevin's Watch, that way I'd just forget about it. But how can I stay away?? "Oh the pain...!" (as Spock mindmelds with Horta)

So much to hate about Linden...so little time.

...what she does at the end of the book doesn't bother me so much, i figured it'd be something earth-shattering like that. What irritates me is her incessant whining about her inadequacies, its the same kinda stuff we saw from TC during the first chronicles, probably why so many of us loved the giants and the land itself.

I did love FR though as a book, so many cool new plot twists. My favorite character is definitely now Stave. I really liked him at the end of Runes, but for me he is what it means to truly be haruchai, not just this cheap imitation that the masters have become. He's like the uber-haruchai, the true ak-haru, not the elohim/haruchai/insequent thing that Brinn is.

The thing i've always loved about how SRD writes is that while we have one character (the anti-hero) that we all want to poke in the eye with the staff of law, we are surrounded by characters that embody all the characteristics that we equate with heroism. It sucks that we have to wait another 3 years for AATE, but I think SRD is taking us places we've never truly been in the fantasy genre...i'm stoked to see how it all ends.

storm wrote: What irritates me is her incessant whining about her inadequacies, its the same kinda stuff we saw from TC during the first chronicles, probably why so many of us loved the giants and the land itself.

I have honestly never been able to understand the people who complain about what TC was like in the first Chrons. I never had a problem with him--he was a great character, very well fleshed out.
Linden has a noticably different character, but with enough similarities that the reading experience is almost the same, and she's equally well fleshed out. I suppose it's not surprising people who didn't like TC in the first chrons don't like Linden in FR--this book is a lot like The Illearth War, in tone and everything, not just superficially.

Murrin wrote:I have honestly never been able to understand the people who complain about what TC was like in the first Chrons. I never had a problem with him--he was a great character, very well fleshed out.
Linden has a noticably different character, but with enough similarities that the reading experience is almost the same, and she's equally well fleshed out. I suppose it's not surprising people who didn't like TC in the first chrons don't like Linden in FR--this book is a lot like The Illearth War, in tone and everything, not just superficially.

...I think for me it was partly because I read the second chrons. before i read the first chrons. and I kept waiting for TC to man up like he does in the second chrons. and it just annoyed me. I totally agree with your interpretation that the illearth war is a lot like FR, it felt strangely familiar reading FR and now i see the parallels to IEW.

Even on the superficial side: I think SRD is deliberately retreading areas from the First Chrons. Kevin's Watch, Mithil Stonedown, staying with the Ramen, quest for the Staff, journey to Skyweir, battle at a Woodhelven--it's all jumbled up, and it's all bigger, and worse, but it echoes the first chrons.

Linden seems to be a powermonger. Her attitude is: Get ultimate power, and save Jeremiah. (I seem to remember another being in these series who thought ultimate power was the answer. His name is Lord Foul.)
Linden must have released many megatons of magical energy there in Andelain, at the end (based on what was written in the book.) She got her ultimate power.
Now, she's going to learn the price of power. And this education is going to be swift, brutal, and very likely fatal.

Covenant committed crimes, and made mistakes, and paid dearly for them. Now it's Linden's turn. In *this* setting, nobody escapes the consequences of their actions. Nobody.
I still think Stephen Donaldson deliberately wanted to portray Linden as an Anti-Hero in this series. We just didn't realize it at first. We didn't realize it until Linden's actions piled up against her.

Edelaith wrote:Linden seems to be a powermonger. Her attitude is: Get ultimate power, and save Jeremiah.

Really? I could have sworn it was "Can't save Jeremiah without power, so get enough to save him". I mean, could you possibly spin things more twistedly? It's like saying, "Mhoram was a powermonger. His attitude was to get enough power to desecrate the earth. And to not share it with anyone else."

Murrin wrote:Even on the superficial side: I think SRD is deliberately retreading areas from the First Chrons. Kevin's Watch, Mithil Stonedown, staying with the Ramen, quest for the Staff, journey to Skyweir, battle at a Woodhelven--it's all jumbled up, and it's all bigger, and worse, but it echoes the first chrons.

Of course he's retreading areas from the First Chronicles (and the 2nd, while they were in the Land). There's only, like, 5 places in the whole damn Land.

I don't see how you can say this is "bigger." When you look at the horrendous march in TIW, followed by the huge battle, and then its conclusion in Garroting Deep . . . combined with a much better trip to Skyweir and the raising of dead Kevin . . . followed by the siege of Revelstone, LM's victory, and the final showdown in Foul's own fortress . . . that's a lot bigger than a couple detours through time, a handful of Insequent, impotent Demondim who just sit outside Revelstone and wait, and a whole army of Masters who apparently do nothing other than hang out in Revelstone and be judgmental. The only "big" thing that happened in these two books is the end of FR. And that was maybe a paragraph or two.

That's not bigger, just better. Even if he's not managing it very well, Donaldson's trying to raise the stakes in this series, and he's trying to show it by revisiting those events.

Wayfriend wrote:

Really? I could have sworn it was "Can't save Jeremiah without power, so get enough to save him". I mean, could you possibly spin things more twistedly? It's like saying, "Mhoram was a powermonger. His attitude was to get enough power to desecrate the earth. And to not share it with anyone else."[/quote]

High Lord Mhoram was *terrified* of the power he discovered within himself, when he discovered the true secret of Kevin's Lore.
He was so terrified that he turned the Council of Lord's away from Kevin's Lore after Lord Foul's defeat.
And Lord Mhoram understood that power, alone, could not defeat Lord Foul. Kevin had all 7 Wards, and he could not defeat Lord Foul.

Linden is not afraid of her power.
Linden is only afraid of what other people will do, if they discover what she means to do with that power. (So, she doesn't tell them, but she DOES rely on them to get her to her goal so she can use said power ... that's called manipulation, false friendship, betrayal, and a whole lot of other unkind things.)

High Lord Mhoram didn't need people to warn him about the perils of power. He himself repeated the danger to himself as a litany.
Linden couldn't care a whit about the perils of power, so long as she achieves her goal.

Oh, and Mhoram was out to defend Revelstone, from Trell and Samadhi.
Linden is out for Vengeance. It's Gallows Howe Time for the enemy!

Well put, Edelaith. Here's the point where Linden's wilful blindness becomes damningly culpable:

On page 562 of FR, SRD wrote:If Good cannot be accomplished by evil means, then she would believe that her means were not evil.

Linden had been repeatedly warned that her means were evil. She chose, despite all evidence and advice, to believe that they were not. She arrogated to herself the power to define good and evil in her own terms. Instead of perceiving good and evil — which was the essence of the health-sense, and ought to have been her supreme talent in the Land — she tried to dictate them.

In this matter, even the desire for power is blindness. Unlike Mahrtiir or Anele, Linden chose to be blind, and as a result the Earth itself stands on the brink of destruction.

This is evil, or the word has no meaning.

Of course, good can be accomplished by evil means. The question is - do we want to go that route? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Well, if the few or the one think so, then who's to tell them they are wrong? It's their decision. But is it ok to force that decision on them? Does the paradise found in Omelas justify the price? Even Kevin, who didn't always see things right, strongly opposed the Bloodguard Vow.

Variol Farseer wrote:Well put, Edelaith. Here's the point where Linden's wilful blindness becomes damningly culpable:

On page 562 of FR, SRD wrote:If Good cannot be accomplished by evil means, then she would believe that her means were not evil.

Linden had been repeatedly warned that her means were evil. She chose, despite all evidence and advice, to believe that they were not. She arrogated to herself the power to define good and evil in her own terms. Instead of perceiving good and evil — which was the essence of the health-sense, and ought to have been her supreme talent in the Land — she tried to dictate them.

In this matter, even the desire for power is blindness. Unlike Mahrtiir or Anele, Linden chose to be blind, and as a result the Earth itself stands on the brink of destruction.

This is evil, or the word has no meaning.

Linden has also been told by Esmer that "good and evil" aren't always what they seem. I think Donaldson is in the process of redefining these concepts. He is turning away from an absolutist interpretation and going for something more relative. Absolutism leads to self-righteousness, which is dangerous in it's blind certainty (e.g. Elena and the Earthblood). Absolutism also leads to the opposite danger: despair (e.g. Kevin and the RoD). Absolutism was the cause of the Bloodguard's eventual failure; they couldn't accept that they were fallible, that they didn't live up to their own absolute ideal. And the reason they couldn't was because they were human, despite their apparent super-human abilities. No belief system can work which requires you to be more-than-human. That is inauthentic, like the Oath of Peace. It's not natural or true to the earth. Donaldson has been writing against the idea of absolutist solutions and belief-systems from the very beginning. This is his entire point. It's why Covenant didn't kill Foul at the end of the First Chronicles.

This is why the giants let themselves and their children have their brains exploded while they sat there and did nothing. Their failure was that they expected too much of themselves; they couldn't accept that they could be corrupted. And they expected too much of themselves because they had an unyielding, absolute idea of good and evil. Ironically, they were true to their morality, but their morality failed them because it necessitated their collective suicide. That's simply the logical conclusion of believing the world is strictly black and white, and then "building your home on the white side."

If you're going for an absolute definition of "evil," then you're right: the word has no meaning.

I believe this is also what Donaldson was talking about when he mentioned reexamining Foul's character, seeing that he, too, has motivations which aren't strictly and purely evil. (Granted, we haven't seen this in the text yet). Also, Caerroil Wildwood's retribution--his mass killing--has always been written as if it were justified. Donaldson has never implied that such revenge was evil. The death saturating Gallows Howe is condign. It's appropriate. This isn't the conclusion of a man who thinks about good and evil in absolute terms.