Kevin's Watch

(Quick explanation:

I've been waiting to read FR for my wife to catch up, as she is still in the middle of WGW. However, on Christmas Day she was reading WGW in the living room, her father was reading the paper, her mother was cooking and I was playing UT3. She decided it would be better if I were "spending time with the family", so she gave me permission to read the one book in our house that I haven't devoured... FR

Since then, she's tried to get me to stop reading, but I've respectfully declined...)


Since I'm only partway through FR, I'll make this brief:

I KNEW that "Covenant" wasn't Covenant!

Actually, at first I thought it WAS him, but that he was being controlled by the Despiser the same way Kevin and Elena were (I assumed the lack of Green-ness was due to the lack of the Illearth Stone).

But then, seeing as he spoke through Anele to Linden's companions, I knew that it was someone else who had come to Revelstone.

Seeing how he was able to warm Linden (and repulse Berek with fire), I thought he was Kastenessen.

I wouldn't have guessed that he was Roger with Kastenessan's hand, but still... I KNEW it wasn't Covenant!


OK, rant over now, and now I have to finish the book!

Donaldson likes togive hints.

He kept reffereing to Roger/Thomas as Covenant. NotThomas Covenant, not Urlord...just Covenant...thus actually telling the truth, and hiding it at the same time.

Rigel wrote:She decided it would be better if I were "spending time with the family", so she gave me permission to read the one book . . .

One of my new year's resolutions is to be less of an asshole, so . . . I suppose I'm speechless.

Yeah, I don't think Donaldson was really attempting to fool us into believing it was Covenant - it seemed to me he was trying to get us guessing ABOUT Covenant. Covenant doesn't refer to his power as "little tricks"...and "Oh, that..." It was obvious that something was way out of whack.

I actually had a theory (shattered under Melenkurion Skyweir) that only part of him was present - that his Humbled and Sympathetic self was the keystone of the Arch, while his Ego and Id was useless and therefore could roam the land.

In other words, the parts of him that were needed to contain the Arch stayed, while the other parts formed his likeness traveling with Jeremiah. This would explain why he seemed to teem with ego and lacked discipline and humility.

Of course, that's not at all what happened. And knowing Donaldson, he probably buried some really good seeds in those pages and none of us noticed since we were focused on Covenant and what was so wrong with him.

I just hated those lines where his dialoge sounded like something out of a cheap cable TV Fantasy gimic.

And has anyone else noticed Donaldson's sudden use of the word "magic"? I liked how he always dodged that word and stuck with Lore, Knowledge, Theurgy (that's my favorite) - but Magic seemed to be avoided. I preferred that, personally.