Kevin's Watch

Complex fantasy leaves reader hanging
Reviewed by Shawn Ryan
01-06-2008


Fatal Revenant: Book 2, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
By Stephen R. Donaldson, Putnam, 640 pp.

It's not easy being a fan of Stephen R. Donaldson.

Famous for his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogies as well as his five-book science-fiction series, The Gap Cycle, Donaldson is fascinated by flawed characters. No one is whole; everyone has psychic (and sometimes physical) scars that define who they are, how they react and what they're willing to do to get what they want. They are not always nice.

Donaldson at times spends too much time inside the heads of these damaged people, making you want to (a) slap the character across the face and say "Get over it!"; (b) wring his neck for being such a scummy piece of humanity, or (c) hug him and tell him that everything is going to be OK (usually it isn't).

Yet Donaldson's imagination is so phenomenally rich, his ability to devise complex plots so exquisitely developed, he overcomes these irritants. Not content to simply rehash what's gone before in his book series, Donaldson generally turns everything on its head from book to book, turning black into white and good into bad.

Within its 600-plus pages, Fatal Revenant, the second in his four-book Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, is confusing, brilliant, slow-paced and rocket-powered. Nothing is as it seems; nothing is certain; nothing happens the way you expect.

Characters deal with self-doubt, frustrating intransigence, ignorance and the line between madness and sanity.

If you haven't read the other Chronicles of Thomas Covenant books, Fatal Revenant is not the place to start. You will be lost.

But for Covenant fans who aren't aware of the new series: In The Runes of the Earth, the first book of the Last Chronicles, Linden Avery, heroine of the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, has returned to the Land, the magical region that she helped save.

Her autistic son, Jeremiah, has been kidnapped by Lord Foul, the villain who's once again trying to escape his metaphysical prison and destroy the Earth. Covenant is dead, having sacrificed himself at the end of the Second Chronicles.

Ten years have passed in Linden's world, 3,000 in the Land, which is a shadow of its former self. Trying to rescue her son, Linden must deal with Foul, Covenant's twisted son Roger, and half a dozen other deadly impediments. At the end of Runes, both Jeremiah and Covenant are seen on horseback, racing for the safety of the castle Revelstone.

Of course, all is not how it seems. In Fatal Revenant, Jeremiah and Covenant are completely different from what Linden expects (remember, black is white, good is bad). Jeremiah has lost his autism and is brash, outspoken and completely devoted to Covenant. Covenant, meanwhile, is harsh, revenge-minded and distant, showing no affection for Linden, whom he loved in the Second Chronicles.

For some authors, that situation would cover an entire book. For Donaldson, it's only the first half of Fatal Revenant.

The second half is spent with Linden, angered to the point of granite obsession by what happened in the first half, who seeks a way to gather more power for herself so she can rescue her son and exact her vengeance on Lord Foul. It's not a good mindset to have when you may be capable of destroying all existence if you get the power you want.

Fatal Revenant ends on a perilous note, setting up the next book, Against All Things Ending. Unfortunately, that book isn't scheduled for release until 2010 and will probably require a re-reading of at least Fatal Revenant to get up to speed again. But a second (or third) reading of such a complex book is not a bad thing.



About Shawn Ryan Shawn Ryan is the travel editor and entertainment editor for The Anniston Star.