A Last Dark Rewrite

[SkurjMaster]

Ok. I seem to be among a set of (still) fans of SRD that think that the story failed or at least has some very serious flaws. Ok. Why don't we rewrite it for him? Seriously.

Which way should it have gone? Let's fix this turkey!

[ussusimiel]

I've thought (and posted) about this a bit. My two main criticisms of the LCs are related to each other: structure and pacing. I think that the structure of the LCs caused the pacing to be very poor.

My suggestion is that the LCs would have been better if they weren't told chronologically, because it takes two whole books to get TC back into the story. Instead we would be dropped into the middle of the story, maybe somewhere between the waking of the Worm and TC seeing the Worm approaching the Land off the coast in the Sunbirth Sea.

I personally think that this could have effectively trimmed an entire book out of the first 3 in the series. This would have left more room for the ending to be fully fleshed out, even if that meant that there still ended up being 4 books in the series.

The pacing could have been improved dramatically as everything that went before TC's resurrection would need to be told in flashback. This could be interwoven with the present action, providing relief from the tension and explaining the direness of the straits. (I would even take the risk of having the 'real' world events of how Linden and Jeremiah ended up entering the Land told as flashback.)

u.

[starkllr]

That's an interesting thought!

Another thing the flashback approach would do, is to immerse the reader in the sense of damaged/broken causality.

It would be really hard to pull off well, but the payoff would be worth it.

[lurch]

oh I think there should have been alot more guns. ROTE had a lot of guns in it. Thats how Linden got dead. So the end should of haved guns. Yeaa, a big shoot out between the urviles and Linden and Thomas with Ar's and Aks and RPs and and oh yea,,cars should have been ,,lots of car chases..TC in a Boss'stang and Linden in like a Ferrari and the urViles on motorcycles and TC and Linden get chased by them and then they turn the tables and run over the demondim spawn and then shoot any of them that survived bouncing off the hood or front bumper. Yeeaaa,,and then the Sandgorgons come zooming in with Monster 4x4 trucks and start crunching all the small cars and the TC sacrifices his ' stang witha full tank of gas and just as a Sandgorgon Monster Truck crushes it TC throws a lit match and BOOM the Monster truck catches fire and then it explodes and a chain of explosion takes out all the Sandgorgons and their Monster 4x4 trucks..yeaaa...that would have so much better.. Matter of fact..Donaldson shouldn't end it at all..he should have just said..the further adventures of TC and Linden in The Land will be released in 3months suitable on SonyPlayStation2 for your Inter active Fun and Pleasure.!!!

[Savor Dam]

Oy. I have to conclude that u and lurch are not serious. Please. I am willing to consider a rewrite of the LCs...but there are limits.

The "real world" start of ROTE needs to be the first set of scenes in the Last Chrons. We need to start there...and one thing that it seems everyone agrees upon is how awesome those opening ROTE chapters are. No matter how much abuse has been piled on the rest of the LCs, I don't think anyone has taken a serious shot at the "real world" chapters. Riveting!

Firearms and automobiles in the Land? I won't even dignify that with more comment than to suggest that such things belong in the Bad Writing Game in Mallory, where they have already tried out summoning Sheriff Lytton, his pistol, and his white gold belt-buckle to the Land. Ewww. Acceptable for a game in Mallory, but not as a serious rewrite possibility for the LCs.

(not beating up the posters...just not willing to accept the ideas)

[dlbpharmd]

I don't think anyone has taken a serious shot at the "real world" chapters. Riveting!

Agree 100%.

[SkurjMaster]

The first thing that I would do is work the Creator/ochre robe dude back into the story. Somehow he should have handed the race car to Jeremiah (Linden took him to town, the hospital, something, etc.) before his translation to the Land. Of course then, Jerry-boy can't tell what ochre dude says to him until he frees his own mind. But what he says should be motivation for Jerry and revelation to Linden and TC. The next thing is that TC appears in the first book!

[dlbpharmd]

I had the idea that the Creator appeared to Jeremiah prior to his kidnapping by Roger. I think that would've been an awesome reveal in TLD. I felt this way because of the "mother of all spoilers" comment made by SRD in the GI, many years ago.

[ussusimiel]

Oy. I have to conclude that u and lurch are not serious. Please. I am willing to consider a rewrite of the LCs...but there are limits.

I'm serious enough about my suggestion, SD, although I acknowledge the risk involved. Like many others, I recognise that the writing at the start of ROTE is some of the best in the LCs and that's why I would be reluctant to tamper with it. However, the reason that I feel that the risk could be taken is that, for the most part, the readers of the LCs were always going to be TCTC fans. Imagine how it would feel when the previous usual structure of the Chrons was deviated from and then imagine how cool it would be when you eventually slipped into the 'real' world flashback sequence.

I think experimenting with the structure would have given SRD more freedom to play to his stortyelling strengths and it would have required that the whole plot edifice be far tighter. Of course these are just ideas and their main purpose is to help me understand some of my previous frustrations with the LCs. They also help make clear how difficult editing the LCs would be if you didn't know the whole story arc. It's only now that the series is finished that I can even begin to formulate ideas like this.

u.

[starkllr]

I think that by the time we get to TLD, it's too late to fix (or change, if you prefer) a lot about the LC's.

Without getting too deep into details of how it would work, here are some things that I think are serious problems with the LC's and that would need to be addressed in any rewriting of it:

Roger's role and importance in the story. His relationship with his father - and TC's apparent lack of any effort to even contact him in the 10 years between TPTP and TWL - is a glaring omission in the LC's. As long as Roger is going to play a role in the story, that really has to be addressed in a significant way.

Linden's self-doubt through the first three books. It's too much, especially after seeing the journey she went through in the 2C's, and where she ends up emotionally (and what she's spent the 10 years since doing). She's utterly unable, for 3.5 books, to apply the lessons she's learned in her previous time in the Land, or in her time running the hospital.

I could have better accepted her despair throughout most of the LC's if she wasn't in such a seemingly good place when we first see her in ROTE. If she hadn't yet come to the realization that she had to let her patients heal themselves and could only try to set up the circumstances to do so. If she were more conflicted over Joan's lack of recovery; if she blamed herself for setting the caesures in motion by giving Joan her wedding ring back (if, perhaps, Lord Foul rubbed it in during her translation to the Land). OR, if she'd tried to find Roger sometime during those 10 years and either failed, or found him and failed to connect with him, or somehow made things worse for him (doesn't it make sense that she would have at least made some effort to find TC's son, after the end of WGW?).

I was expecting all through the books to see some sign of the other real world people (Sandy Eastwall, Sheriff Lytton) having been brought to the Land. I think that either that should have been explicitly ruled out in the text, or the idea should have been explored. There would have been another possible reason for Linden to feel guilty (and descend into the despair we witnessed, and which SRD needed her to feel), if she felt responsible for other real people who were trapped and helpless in the Land.

The deaths of Anele and Liand were a huge letdown. They were both set up to be far more important than they ended up being. That would need to be dealt with - either fashioning better ends for them both, or reducing their importance so that they're not built up the way that they were.

Jeremiah. His story is potentially fascinating, and an antirely different kind of psychological damage to address. LA and TC are both adults when we meet them, both more or less fully formed. Jeremiah is not, and the story of how he tries to become a functioning adult in the aftermath of YEARS of possession and torment, with no experience of a normal life to draw on, is really compelling. Or at least, it could have been. If anything, maybe HE should have been the main viewpoint character for the whole LC's, or at least come into things a lot sooner than he did.

That's a start, at least...

[SkurjMaster]

Having Jeremiah as one of the main POV characters would be great, but how is he going to do that with a croyel sucking on his spine? What I thought was going to be true before he is freed from the croyel was that we would find out that somehow Jeremiah had struck his own bargain with the croyel at some point in order to learn some necessary lore for constructing something. As a character, dealing with slaving yourself out to a demon for some dark undertakings would have made for some good writing.

I also thought that Roger and/or Joan would be redeemed as characters. Not!!!!

Liand should have been the first new Lord and should have been the one to rally the people of the Land to its defense.

Every time I think about what could have been I come back to the loss of the Harrow. Such an opportunity. Such a disappointment.

[SkurjMaster]

And another thing. In the rewrite, the Worm shouldn't be an actual worm. I always hated this idea. Why didn't the Earth shatter the moment that the Worm awakened? I mean, really, if the Earth formed around the Worm, when the Worm started to move about why didn't that immediately destroy the Earth? Why does the Worm drinking the Earthblood crack the Arch? Never got that one.

In the rewrite the Worm should be a mega-Elohim! Not sure where that idea is going.

Or. Why was't the Worm simply discovered to be a being of pure wild magic?! Wouldn't that work thematically. Wild magic is antithetical to Earthpower, right? Why couldn't the Worm have been a being that 'ate' the stars (er... Elohim) by destroying them with wild magic?

[Ur Dead]

SRD wrote the LC in a way that left it opened to readers to draw their own conclusions.
Plus the fact he isn't any younger, will he grant premission for other new and upcoming writer(s) to fill in gaps his reader believe there are?
Would adding to the land enhance or take away from what he wrote?

Only time will tell.

I believe he wrote it with this in mind.

[dlbpharmd]

Plus the fact he isn't any younger, will he grant premission for other new and upcoming writer(s) to fill in gaps his reader believe there are?

I seriously doubt it.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Not so much a rewrite as an add-in, but here's some work I've done on behalf of those who might want an explanation of how the Earth was remade:

• • CHAPTER 13: Ur-Earth
  Time's destruction was like the birth of Death, for the Worm of the World's End blazed through the collapsing Arch as if all the Dead host of the Durance incarnate. Absorbing the essence of the Law-forsaken Earth, the Worm trumpeted Power beyond any mortal Command as it resonated its aura's synonymy with the Seven Words.
  
  Khabaal harad. Mill minas duroc. Abatha melenkurion.
  
  At the last Word, like a bell toll in a church overlooking an abyss, Melenkurion Skyweir utterly detonated.
  
  But in Jeremiah's apt, adept hands, the shards of the mountain's devastation became pieces in a mystical game.
  
  He knew that the Worm's distorted annunciation of the emblems of the world—the hallucinatory emanations of its mountainous—countrywide—continental—tectonic halation—symbolized the final inversion of Time. But the Worm had the power to kill everyone upon the Earth only because the Laws of Life and Death had already been broken, and their perichoretic relationship with the Arch weakened Time as they were themselves weakened. And only those who came from beyond Time had ultimately been responsible for the shattering of the Earth's Law. Only wild magic, obliquely or providentially, allowed now the World's End.
  
  As Linden had once done, her son clayed from the holocaust of the lost Skyweir icons of the Staff of Law's power. His did not surpass, but they did equal, those sculpted by Linden's argency in the here and now where there could be no there.
  
  Novae of temporal inferno gyred from Rivenrock's wrecked splendor.
  
  Covenant summoned all the hope and faith and love he possessed for his redemptive intuitions, his final insights, and decided to just start saying aloud, “The three of us should turn some of these rocks into new EarthBlood. Just kinda draw the Worm back towards us, so to speak. The way this metaphor or however you try to look at it goes, the Worm's ascent towards the actual stars corresponds to the complete rupture at the crux of the Arch.
  
  “And if you haven't noticed yet, a lot of things that happen in the Land—and to people connected to it—are types, like prophetic symbols, for each other and for the future. Maybe what the new Forestal's forbidding did was meant in part to anticipate us coming up with an even stronger forbidding.”
  
  Jeremiah suddenly expressed strange delight. “And we could drink the new EarthBlood, Command whatever we wanted. We're already each as powerful as the Worm. Then we'd be more worthwhile than gods. Let the Elohim imitate the Creator or whatever. If we do this, we'd have to end up saving the world.”
  
  “Now that you mention it, honey, it sounds like it could help. I know the EarthBlood made me a lot stronger when I drank it.” But to Covenant Linden replied, “Are you sure, Thomas? Giving the Worm more...”
  
  “... is exactly what no one would ever expect.” Covenant's smile sounded like the Despiser's—or the Creator's.
  
  Before, while, and after they decided to, the man and woman and youth from beyond the Land's Time melted the Blood of the Earth from Rivenrock's ruin.
  
  … There was no need to restrain the krill, and so no one tried to. Linden tetrated so much fire through the dagger's hilt that she could have resurrected Covenant a thousand times and be yet undone with this might. Jeremiah laced the grave of the Skyweir with a tapestry of ensorcelments filigreed and mellifluous as the legacy of the Viles. Covenant stared into the collapsing sky, trying to remember—
  
  He did not—would never—have to fight the Despiser again. Nonetheless the Creator's fallen brother posed a transcendent challenge, even translated as he was into the Timewarden's soul. Surquedrous as cruelty, a-Jeroth's phantasmal presence occluded memories from Covenant's use.
  
  A garden like Eden at an impossible distance [this is a dual reference: to SRD's love of Peter Straub, and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" phrase in TPTP], the One Tree sang its withered song to Covenant's epochal eyes.
  
  While dark like the father of all Falls purled across the heavens, as voids devoured the remnants of the Land, Covenant prayed to himself for an answer.
  
  The right shapes.
  
  The right materials.
  
  “The Dead.” Oh my God. The Dead.
  
  Linden appeared to recognize Covenant's realization immediately. Brandishing her aura, she called the host of the broken Law of Death before her.
  
  They streamed from the shadows of eternity, numinous and innominate. For they were as silent now as when the Worm had been awoken. All they said, they did with their eyes: the pleading glory standing in their sight.
  
  Realms or galaxies spiraled around Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. The Worm incandesced its pathway with the finality of all light.
  
  And Covenant spoke to Berek and the Theomach, his images and ur-friends.
  
  “What happened to all of you was the keystone of Despite. Foul's whole damn plan turned on getting people to break the Law. Now...”
  
  “Now we're going to set things right,” Linden finished.
  
  Deluged with the EarthBlood, Jeremiah crowed, “And this is how we'll do it!”
  
  Rivers of pure red coiled around the Skyweir's floating rubble.

The idea is that the Trinity (I'm going to call T&L&J that from now on when I refer to their recreative collective) somehow uses the Dead and the EarthBlood to rewrite the Laws of Life and Death, and that this process is the one that saves the Earth.

[DrPaul]

One idea that I've had is an inversion of the Unbelief theme of the First Chronicles and the snakebite scene in TPTP.

In the Second and Last Chronicles, Foul and the Ravers are able to intervene in the "real" world to the extent of being able to inflict real harm in it, control people living in it, and influence the choices of Covenant and Linden, among others.

Now, suppose Foul's intervention had extended to the point of being able to put Linden and/or Covenant and/or Jeremiah and/or whoever in a position where they believed they faced, or actually did face, a choice between the survival of the "real" world and the survival of the world of the Land. I think there were/are possibilities for that idea.

[SkurjMaster]

One idea that I've had is an inversion of the Unbelief theme of the First Chronicles and the snakebite scene in TPTP.

In the Second and Last Chronicles, Foul and the Ravers are able to intervene in the "real" world to the extent of being able to inflict real harm in it, control people living in it, and influence the choices of Covenant and Linden, among others.

Now, suppose Foul's intervention had extended to the point of being able to put Linden and/or Covenant and/or Jeremiah and/or whoever in a position where they believed they faced, or actually did face, a choice between the survival of the "real" world and the survival of the world of the Land. I think there were/are possibilities for that idea.

Then the Land and its peoples stop being an externalization for TC and LA and starts broadening the original scope intended by SRD.

I would note, however, that the Land did not serve much in the way of an externalization for Jeremiah. At least not to the degree experienced by TC and LA. Both of them got to go home and feel the impact of their Land-given experience, at least once. Jeremiah discovered the Land and never returned to the 'real' world after having been made whole.

[Seareach]

Plus the fact he isn't any younger, will he grant premission for other new and upcoming writer(s) to fill in gaps his reader believe there are?

I seriously doubt it.

I don't seriously doubt it. I know it. I think saying to him "hey, get someone to write the bits that were missing" is like telling him he didn't do a good job and...well...authors always want to be told that!

I lurk here a lot. I don't post here. There's reasons for that. Those who know me know why. Those that don't don't need to. But there's only so long I can bite my tongue before I sever it!

Could any one of you individually have written the last chronicles or The Last Dark or whatever any better. I sincerely doubt that. No offense but I think that's a reality. Sure, some of you don't like the book, some of you don't like elements of the book so on and so forth. You're entitled to your opinions. That's what we do when we read books: we like it, we don't, we discuss it or whatever.

HOWEVER

Sue me if I'm overreacting here but gimme a break (actually, give SRD a break). Discuss by all means. But say you could have done better (or that the collaborative minds of KW could do better)?! All I have to say is you're delusional.

Lurch, I get ya. Sanest post here. Read between the lines, people!

[SkurjMaster]

Seareach,

All that this is about is discussing what we liked and did not like. I am not here to put down SRD. He is a great author. So good, in fact, that it is hard for me personally to enjoy many other authors. And I am not a writer and the point is well taken. However, I am also not a mechanic, but I can still tell when something is not right. The call to 'rewrite' the LCs is kind of tongue-in-cheek. I would seriously like to see SRD himself do it. They can't all be home runs! My opinion, and that is all that it really is, is that he dropped the ball on this one. HARD.

I would also venture to say, although I admittedly can't see into the mind and heart of the author, that it appears that SRD seemed to suffer from a similar problem that Robert Jordan came to be plagued by, and that was the seeming thought 'I write these stories for myself and if the public doesn't like them then so what.'

I can see that SRD tried to write a good story. But it was a stilted, hurried mess of a story. Mostly in the last two books. It was really disappointing overall, despite having some very good moments. The ending especially was... rather blah and lacking in creativity.

There were so many really, really good elements there, but the technique/goal to which SRD was driving did not permit these to shine.

Asking the LCs audience if they could have done better is like the manufacturer of a substandard cell phone asking its customers if they could have made a better cell phone. While I respect, and admire, SRD's creativity and particular genius, you still have to know (and cater to at least a little) your audience.

If you could offer anything that would explain SRD's choices better and stimulate my enjoyment of the LCs more, then I welcome what you have to offer.

[TheFallen]

Geez... hero worship is a dangerous thing, since it tends to blinker the observer. I've mentioned "the emperor's new clothes syndrome" elsewhere.

The call to 'rewrite' the LCs is kind of tongue-in-cheek. I would seriously like to see SRD himself do it. They can't all be home runs! My opinion, and that is all that it really is, is that he dropped the ball on this one. HARD.

I also am sure that nobody has said (or indeed is saying) that they could have written any of the Chrons "better", let alone all of them. I'll happily go on record here and state that I have the greatest admiration for anyone who can be satisfied enough with their creation to let it go into the wider world and be judged. We're all SRD fans here - or at least are interested enough in his writing to visit here. We're all aware that The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant represent the work of near-on half a lifetime. And so the call for a re-write is indeed clearly tongue-in-cheek, as the OP skurjmaster has felt the unnecessary need to clarify above. As a side note, I too have elsewhere wistfully wished there could be the issuance of a "director's cut" of TLD, or at least a Gildenfire-style addition from the author - but I'm not seriously expecting for either to happen.

Having said that, I don't at all agree that Lurch's (quite deliberately) sarcastic post above is "the sanest post here". It's no more than an irrelevant reductio ad absurdum, since nobody here has been lamenting the absence of elements more normally found in some pre-adolescent kapow bang action novel. Nobody wanted TLD to be the novelistic version of say a Transformers movie and to pretend that they do is asinine - it's not the lack of such triteness that lies at the root of people's partial disappointment in TLD.

Yes, of course discussion of any author's works is freely allowable and especially because SRD didn't write TLD just for himself. How do I know that? Because he got it published, of course. And in so doing, he offers the work up to the judgement of his readership - who, to be brutal about it, are the people paying his wages. There's nothing either surprising or wrong about that.

Sure, in my view, the LCs are intended as a heavily symbolic work. Nothing particularly wrong with that either. However, in being parts 6 to 10 of a larger whole, they self-evidentially have a yardstick against which to be measured - and one that the author himself set in Chrons 1 and 2. And it's the bar that he'd already set for himself - or to put it another way the expectation level that he'd already created in his readership - that SRD misses in the Last Chrons.

You're of course right, Seareach, to encourage people to "read between the lines". There are IMHO layers of meaning lying beyond the narrative surface of all the Chrons - and I've largely enjoyed chewing the fat about what SRD's deeper intent is. Having said that, your plea "to read between the lines" is to me sadly an absolute necessity as far as the Last Chrons and particularly TLD goes - because, unlike the 1st and 2nd Chrons, it does not adequately satisfy at the narrative level. Entirely unlike their standard-setting predecessors, one absolutely has to read between the lines to get anything out of the LCs.

That's the key difference and that's where I strongly believe most people's disappointment lies. The 1st and 2nd Chrons satisfied massively at the narrative level, with excellent dramatic pacing, well-crafted and credible plotlines, beautifully realised backdrops and - most important of all - superbly and caringly depicted characters that the reader could not help but emotionally identify with. Reading TPTP or WGW put the reader through the emotional wringer - we truly cared and were fully involved with characters and plot. Okay, sure there's a whole heap of more profound philosophy being conveyed under the surface of any of SRD's works and to get a feel for that in addition to being captivated by the narrative line was to make the 1st and 2nd Chrons even more satisfying. That's precisely the way that successful allegory works - it's couched in an engrossing and narratively satisfying shell - but to me, this is not the case with the Last Chrons. The philosophy is pretty much all that there is.

Yes of course, SRD can publish whatever he wants and if his intent has switched far more to the expounding of his philosophical views at the expense of taking care over the narrative, then that's his right - as it is equally ours to discuss, appreciate and criticise. I personally find SRD's expressed philosophy/metaphysics in the Last Chrons intellectually interesting and worthy of discussion in their own right. But that's a thing that is all a little dry and as such, it doesn't assuage my disappointment at his apparent lack of attention to crafting the narrative vehicle. I'm not satisfied narratively and therefore emotionally. Therefore to me, reading the Last Chrons became largely an intellectual exercise.

I can see that SRD tried to write a good story. But it was a stilted, hurried mess of a story. Mostly in the last two books. It was really disappointing overall, despite having some very good moments. The ending especially was... rather blah and lacking in creativity.

There were so many really, really good elements there, but the technique/goal to which SRD was driving did not permit these to shine.

Asking the LCs audience if they could have done better is like the manufacturer of a substandard cell phone asking its customers if they could have made a better cell phone. While I respect, and admire, SRD's creativity and particular genius, you still have to know (and cater to at least a little) your audience.

If you could offer anything that would explain SRD's choices better and stimulate my enjoyment of the LCs more, then I welcome what you have to offer.

Good analogy re the substandard cellphone. Especially if it comes from a phone manufacturer whose earlier models have worked perfectly and which you have therefore invariably adored, invariably purchased and thus invariably shown a massive brand loyalty towards.

I fully agree with what many have said - SRD would have been well-served prior to publication with an objective take on TLD - from a strong but knowledgeable editor and/or some robust (yet still fair) draft critics with some sense of objectivity. And there'd be no shame in that - after all, let's face it, it must be nigh on impossible for any artist in any medium to retain an objective view on his/her own work.

Anyhow, skurjmaster, if people are really going to insist upon passing judgement on the sanity of posts... ...IMO your post I quoted from above is actually the "sanest post" in this thread.