Kevin's Watch

I am sure others have touched on many of my points, in depth and better worded. But I wanted to put my thoughts together.
Having enjoyed this series from its inception, picking up The Illearth War in paperback at a library when I was 14, in the late 70s, it has been with me most of my life.
And, in a year with some other really significant happenings, dead father, dead dog, this too was a let-down, though nowhere near the scale of those.
I find it not a fault of SRD, other than it perhaps is a victim of his success. If asked, I am sure he will say he had a great, positive working experience with his editor, but this book needed to be EDITED. Edited by an editor willing to speak truth to power. To say this is dragging on. To say how many times is this going to be repeated? Things like that.
Because there are many things in it that spring wonderfully from SRD's imagination, but they don't come into a seamless whole, to my mind.
First off, as much of a joy as I find them to be in his stories, there were too many damn Giants. I could not keep track of the original crew that got landed. It was not that much bigger than the Search, but the characters of the Search were so fully formed, it was enough to make you weep. They were not people in the same sense as the First and Pitchwife, Honninscrave and even Cable Seadreamer were. It was lusty busty bawdy sword wenches all. Then, in this final act, we were delivered a whole "nother: crop of Giants, fresh meat to be devoured as the story dictated. With a name like Lostson Longwrath, one might think a giantish tale of him would bring you to tears long before the end, but when he ended, I was like, "another one?"
Too often, too often, everyone arrives at JUST THE RIGHT TIME. I don't recall this happening in any of the other books. There were the waynhim who saved Mhoram's bacon in TPTP, but that was totally unexpected. In this series, after it happened once in a battle, I was expecting Linden to arrived, headed northeast at the same time that Covenant arrived riding southwest, and for their horses to collide.
She Who Must Not Be Named was a trick played on the readers. Accurately named, she was She Who Must Not Be Given A Name, but if you do that at the beginning, there's no payoff at the end, though there was little payoff with the actual revelation. It is the same trick played in The Name of The Doctor, but I didn't mind it there because by the time you got to the non-revelation, you had many other, better payoffs to make you almost miss that you had been lied to.
We had been told so many times that if the Worm was roused, the world would end. That anyone powerful enough to challenge the worm would destroy the arch of time in the process of challenging him. What we got was the World was "mostly" destroyed.
It's not just that there were too many Giants. There were too many important characters. There was a set piece for Jeremiah at the end, but he sulks in between those, and almost drops out in between. At one point, they race on ahead, leaving the giants behind. Which is good, because it means SRD doesn't have to figure out what the hell they should be saying to each other. But there's also a lost opportunity for us to really distinguish between all of them and learn who they are.
I did like that Covenant just took Foul into himself. It pays off what we have been told all along. But I'm not happy there was no parallel with She, perhaps with Linden or with Joan. A lot of restructuring would have been needed, but I think it was needed.
The epilogue, as it was DONE, is a shadow compared to what we got in the endings of the first and second chronicles. The first, you had a full chapter of interaction between Covenant and the Creator, with the flash to Glimmermere, with the fullest version of the white wild magic gold song and the hymn to Covenant. And it paid off in the "real" world.
And the ending of the second chronicles was just as intricate, though it was Covenant playing the role of the Creator and answering the remaining questions.
Other problems with the work lay in some of the repetition. In the final confrontation in WGW, Covenant goes in and Linden remains outside, is possessed but fights her way free of the possession. In TLD, Covenant goes in, Jeremiah remains outside, gets possessed but fights his way free of the possession. It was nearly identical. The voice inside his/her head was sneering at him/her.
Meeting Giants in the Lower Land.
Finding a Stonedowner on day one who will guide you through most of the land.
I am thankful that this edition, though it involves a caesure, didn't subject me to the term formication again. Overused in the first three.
Lastly, while I was expecting Maartiir to become a Forestal (possibly because of a pre-publication comment made here in addition to my own guesses) I am at a loss to know if that is him on the cover of the book, or of Hile Troy. The book says his wrapping fell from his eyes as he was transformed. So I'd say it's Hile.
So this, in a bad year, has this effect on me. How do you hurt a man who has lost everything?
Give him back something broken.
As much as I am disappointed, I lose no love or respect for SRD's craft. I just wish he had not either rushed himself, or had had had an editor who saw these flaws and worked to fix them.

You echo sentiments from many others here.

There are certain expectations one has going into another installment in a long series. While we can't assume every expectation will be met, neither can we fault each other for having expectations in the first place. As you note, Donaldson included lots of repetition in the LC of elements from the previous Chronciles. So he was aware of these expectations, too, and followed certain "formulas" already laid down by what had gone before. So it's reasonable to expect similarities.

It's also reasonable to acknowledge that there have to be some differences, or there would be no point in having another installment. So the two points at which personal opinion comes in (and can't really be questioned, because it's subjective *) is 1) how much those similarities were either a development on a theme or merely redundant, and 2) how much those differences either enriched the story and surpassed previous examples or fell short of previous novelty and surprise.

For me, as well as many others here, the problems we've had can be summed up in terms of these two issues. I agree with you, SGuilfoyle, that those aspects which were similar felt like inferior repeats of previous tropes. I'd prefer Sunder and Lena/Atiaran to Liand. I'd prefer Bannor and Cail to Stave. I'd prefer Foamfollower and Pitchwife to Whats-their-names. I'd prefer Sunbane to Kevin's Dirt. I'd prefer the 1st and 2nd confrontations with Foul to the huggy-short scene we got this time.

And the fact that the new additions rarely rose above previous highs from the last two Chronicles, only exacerbated this problem, and could not save the lackluster repeats. The only time I felt like there was something genuinely new and interesting about this Chronicles was the few chapters in the first half of Fatal Revenant where Linden went back in time, or at the end when Linden brought Covenant back. There were other new elements that were okay, but fell short of the novelties in the first 2.

*[So the question of whether we're wanting "more of the same" or being "miseld by nostalgia" misses the point. People DID want a little more of the same, or they wouldn't have been looking forward to another Chronicles. But that's not to say we merely wanted a repeat of previous Chronicles, because we all loved the surprises that awaited us along the way in the first 2.]