Kevin's Watch

Mine is either Mhoram or Thomas.

Mhoram, the others all have these annoying hang-ups.

But maybe you should put up some of the others as well?

The Healer?
Korik?

Minor characters to be sure, but they do get their own time in the light.

What he said...

part of it was also through bannor's point of view, towards the end of TIW.

Mhoram or TC.

Mhoram, followed by either Korik or Bannor

duchess of malfi wrote:part of it was also through bannor's point of view, towards the end of TIW.

Yeah, for about four sentences.

I personally prefer the story to be told through TC's eyes .. because he is so conflicted and torn .. he brings great interest .. great frustration .. great irritation .. and the greatest opportunity for empathy into the story .. imho ..

I came away from TCTC really feeling something for this miserable guy .. and for the first time ever I even appreciated him .. what he had to endure and how much he gave ..

I love Mhoram .. his language and respectfulness of his speech .. but his pov would be quite limited imho .. his experience not as varied as Covenants .. in that he hadnt been through hell .. and come to paradise .. and hadnt known the torment of what TC had lost ..

These 2 would be my prime pov story tellers . but TC my first pick

Mhoram

Where have u been IANJ? Ur user name is still 1 of my favs on the Watch!

I agree with you, Sky...though your post is as rambling as ever!

~MsMary~

Though seeing the Land through Mhoram's eyes--with compassion, humor, humanity--is a pleasure, I liked Covenant's POV best, because that's whose viewpoint the series started with, so that became the baseline for me. It's also interesting because Covenant is so obviously a coflicted and possibly unreliable POV character, but also a very intellegent one. He thinks conceptually, sees not just details but how the details fit into a whole schematic, grasps the essentials of how Foul operates, and realizes the implications of his discoveries. So often his revelations are thought-provoking, and I think his discoveries about such things as the efficacy of guilt and power and the way he comes to his response to despair illuminate many themes.

I think it's also essential to understand the whole "leper's morality" that he has to live by (placing one's most basic physical safety and control over everything else: feelings, imagination, dreams) in order to "get" his character, and his POV is the way a reader comes to some kind of understanding. It wasn't until a few chapters into LFB, when you start to see how that morality affects Covenant's concerns and considerations in the Land, that I started to feel more sympathy/empathy for the character. When viewed through others' POVs, especially Troy's and Linden's, he seems (even more ) annoying. In the Second Chronicles I was somewhat irritated by his insistence on keeping the ring and doing things the way he thought they should be done (going on the quest for the One Tree, making the deal with the Elohim (spelling?) to get the map to the One Tree), but when the POV shifted back to Covenant, his motivations are clearer.

Which brings me to Linden. I didn't hate her or anything of that nature, but I was least satisfied when the story was told from her POV. Aside from her disturbing suicide-bedeviled past, for me I think the resistance I had to her POV was that, having spent three novels investing effort and getting inside Covenant's head, which is not always easy or pleasant, and which requires coming to an understanding of some of the basic rules that govern his life, having to undergo the entire process again for Linden was hard to swallow.

I think Linden is a little less accessible, since her story comes out in a piecemeal fashion you spend a good chunk of time not knowing her motivations and psychoses, and her past is maybe even darker than Covenant's pre-Land experiences. Though he's unlikable in many ways, I ended up liking Covenant by the end of the First Chronicles. Though often he did the exact opposite of what I would have thought he would, or wanted him to have done, you spend so much time hearing his thoughts, you come to understand, if not concur, with his actions. This is part of what I liked about the Chronicles, their way of thwarting expectations and frustrating the reader, but doing so in an ultimately satisfying way. So, that given, it's not surprising that the Second Chronicles didn't spend all its narrative on Covenant's POV, which is what one might expect them conventionally to do.

Perhaps, after more re-readings (and with the publication of the Third/Last Chronicles--which seem inevitably to entail more Linden, and maybe other, new characters, and less Covenant), with the Second Chronicles story more fixed in my head, Linden will come to be a more agreeable POV character, as Covenant did as the First Chronicles progressed. But, because he's the original, I still think he's the best.

While Covenant was the protagonist, and a lot of the revelations and emotions come through him, I still found reading Mhoram's POV a lot more rewarding and a little easier to digest - Covenant has always been a very complicated character, and I find it a bit of a struggle reading when told through his eyes.
It is amazing reading the chronicles, and Covenants POV adds a lot to the story, but Mhoram was a refreshing break from his problems and contradictions.

Very well said, W.B.!

Oh, so no one thought Hile Troy told the story well? So everyone hates Hile Troy? I guess I'm a minority then.

I liked Troy, but he had some serious blind spots (pun intended, sorry) in his perspective.

I don't think we hate Troy. Like everyone else in these books, we have to pick him apart!

mhoram all the way (hell look @ my name) but i luved the lords so much & was always gutted 2 not get 2 get 2 no some of them better, especially hyrim, shetra, verement, callindrill, osondrea. oops, i guess thats almost all of them. :oops:

i would have to go with what Skyweir said on the first page. Covenants inner workings, although at times really screwed up, can bridge the gap to the reader in ways that most of the other characters cant. although it was great to see Mhorams pov while in Revelstone tending to his people, i think a lot of this came from my own fascination with Revelstone itself. That place is so cool!