Kevin's Watch

Was doing a search on Google... you know how these can turn into a fantastic arborescence in which you lose your mind (or not).

Well, anyway, found something which, upon reading, made me quite uneasy inside.
Through Google I landed on a book review on Amazon, for a book called Gideon's Dawn, then I fell on the review by Chad Schrock, which made such comments:

An accident propels a self-doubting antihero into another world where he immediately costs a salt-of-the-earth family a great deal of sorrow (but one of them will die in his stead later, shaming him with grace). The antihero initially refuses to embrace the messianic destiny the land attempts to foist upon him. An ancient ruler once uttered a curse that deeply scarred the land, but the patches that remain unscathed are fecund (I believe Donaldson's word is "viridian") beyond belief, a shock to the antihero's Earth-dulled senses. Sound familiar, Land and Thomas Covenant fans? Gideon finds a Council of Lords, repositories of ancient wisdom the scholars have not yet been able to decipher, soundenors (for Stonedowners), Wordhaveners (for Woodhelvinin---by this point in the book I was wondering where the Woodhelvinin were, and sure enough, here they came), etc.

Another review and a few details can be found here.
Excerpt:

Gideon’s Dawn is sure to draw many comparisons to Stephen R. Donaldson’s dark and wonderfully unique epic The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Both revolve around deeply flawed main characters drawn from Earth into their respective imaginary lands, each of whom are then proclaimed to be the modern incarnation of ancient legend. And each of these characters brings with him an artifact from his home world that suddenly finds itself possessed of magical powers - - Thomas Covenant’s white gold wedding ring and Gideon Dawning’s staff of Earthen wood. And, of course, each of these anti-heroes finds himself at the center of an ages old conflict in which he is a very unwilling participant. All of that said Michael Warden’s book has its own original voice (...)

And this is the first book of a trilogy, the second book called Waymaker.
And the third... brace yourselves... The Word That Prevails

I haven't read any of these books, so can't be sure how deep this emulation is going.
Anyone know about this? Does SRD know?

Of course, I remind myself that TCTC itself has LotR similarities.

Am I over-reacting?

That's..wow. O.o;

A cheap knock-off indeed.

Yup, sounds like a rip-off to me.

Sound like arip off!!!
I'll say...that was goin to be the Idea for my book.
What's the main guys name..Timmy Cullivert?

Is it that easy, legalwise, to pull that off?

I guess in his defence the author (Michael Warden) might use the same strategy as Microsoft, defending itself against Apple, claiming a common conceptual source, where here Tolkien would be the Xerox Alto counterpart.

That easy?

Boooo!

HAHAHAHAHAH!!!

Sounds like a cheep ripoff.

Gideon Thomas travels to the "Lhand" in which the Counsel of Lards is threatened by an evil being named Darth Fool. It seems that a cave-dwelling wight named Twiki has found the Illearth Staff and is threatening to use it to send his armies of Wookiees to conquer the bastion of Revel-rock. Only Gideon and the power of Laura Vilesilencer's jewel-encrusted light saber stands between the Lards and the destruction of the Doorway of Time.

I'm amazed that anyone thought they could get away with this.

What a plagiarist. I wonder if Donaldson knows.

If I can find this book I will read it and let yall know more about it,if I can get it for free that is,I don't want to support its author if it is a big rip,I will try to download it p2p.

Is the book supposed to be satirical? If not, it seems like a clear copyright violation to me.

.. it's not a satire (judging by the first few pages readable on the Amazon site).

All his other works seem to be Christian youth workbooks of various types.

I've read a little more into the links....
The place is called the Inherited Lands
some of the area names are: deathland Barrens; Stivenwood...did this guy even try to come up with his own ideas?
The Review says that it's a good book, with lots of magic, but it would be hard to read something with so many blatent rip-offs.
...I wonder when the ur-viles will come in..?

Wow...that's pretty sick.-jay

I'd really like to read the book (at least the first few chapters) before I start dumping on Mr. Warden, but it sure looks bad...

Well, at least some things ARE different. Languages, for example, the Dei'lo and the whatever-the-evil-one-is...and Gideon is an ENEMY of the Council Lords...still, it certainly looks like a rip-off on most counts...but hey, I said the same thing about TCTC regarding Tolkien when I started reading the Chrons originally...even stopped in mid-first-trilogy, but later was hard up for something to read and actually finished the books. And thus a true fan was born. So...maybe someone should give these books a read...we all look forward to that brave soul's report!

"and Gideon is an ENEMY of the Council Lords"

Well, think of it this way: in his books, "Council Lords" = "The Clave" (na-mhorams etc).
I think he blended both TC chronicles into his: Land stricken by a curse?

Of course there's gonna be major differences. I'm sure a lot of things are different; enough to take him off the hook in case of a court dispute.

I also reminded myself about the LotR similarities in TCTC: a ring of power; an evil entity lessened, trying to recover through that ring; a quest by the good guys to go to the volcanic retreat of that 'evil-doer'; etc.

But to take the premise of a disturbed anti-hero, from our reality, cast off to a fantasy land where he his taken as some kind of messianic figure to combat the evil of that world, ... that's a prettttty big chunk.

Anyways, didn't read the books, couldn't find one on edonkey or bt (don't want to support a possible plagiarist).

BTW, here's an "interview" with the author.

An excerpt:

EBG: The epic scope of Gideon's Dawn can be compared to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. What do you consider your major influences that shaped your approach to this story?

MDW: Tolkien is a hero of mine, so I naturally looked to him for inspiration in how I approached these books. But I also gleaned insights from other authors, including Herman Melville, C. S. Lewis, and Robert Jordan.

No direct mention of Donaldson.

(Melville? The Giants gonna be replaced by talking whales? )

Further thinking: I remember finding an incredible amount of references to LotR in JMStrazincski's Babylon 5 tv series (the Shadows, Zaha'dum, the Rangers, etc, etc, etc, etc... and, yes you guessed it, etc).
Didn't stop me from loving that series a lot (although it could be quite annoying at certain points).

So I don't know if I'm an hypocrit to feel bad about the Covenant emulation accusations in Warden's books.

But at least Straz never shied away from telling that Tolkien was an inspiration; neither did Donaldson.

Anyway, I posted a question to Mr. Warden on the discussion board at his web site.
(/edit: more specifically here.)
(//edit2: when registering to post there, had to come up with a user name, urLord came to mind and I used it. I realized, too late, that this was a handle already used here. My apologies to the three members named ur lord here for this confusion.)

I want to know from him.

Revenant wrote:Further thinking: I remember finding an incredible amount of references to LotR in JMStrazincski's Babylon 5 tv series (the Shadows, Zaha'dum, the Rangers, etc, etc, etc, etc... and, yes you guessed it, etc).
Didn't stop me from loving that series a lot (although it could be quite annoying at certain points).

theres a difference between paying homage to someone and ripping them off...from what you said about babylon 5, THAT just seems like an homage to Tolkien...two completely different stories...

this other thing is just ridiculous...


there are FAR fewer similarities between LOTR and TCTC than TCTC and this Gideon thing...i can tell just by the summary above

From reading some of the author's posts at his own board (thanks for the link, Revenant), I'm coming to the conclusion that no matter where he got the inspiration from, he's not a writer anywhere near SRD's depth.

It's funny, but the reason I picked up TCTC in the first place was because the idea of a modern man in a fantasy land intrigued me. Reading some of the details of Ward's books, I get none of that same attraction.

An excerpt from the book, apparently a song sung by a group of people at a meeting or celebration of some kind:

In the beginning was the Word,
that through the end remains untamed.
Past Gideon's Fall it yet endured,
past hate and vile death's stench--
its aroma is sweet
Hail Might Word! Hearts Hope! Hail!
In you our hearts hold true.
Speak forth the Word that will prevail,
to let the land once more be new.

While the song was, Ward said, inspired by a Biblical passage, its context and spiritual meaning (not to mention wording) seem entirely too familiar...

What are the chances of this being one huge coincidence?

Anybody up for asking SRD about this fellow on the GI?

Alynna Lis Eachann wrote:
Anybody up for asking SRD about this fellow on the GI?

I'd ask, but since I haven't read Warden's books I'd be worried we were creating a storm in a tea-cup. *However* I must admit, what I've read on this thread makes me think it's worth mentioning to SRD!