Lord Foul's Bane: Chapter 7: Lena
Wednesday, 3 September 2025 20:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teresChapter Six (Part II) | Chapter Eight (Part I)
A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Lord Foul’s Bane! Last time, we heard the legend of Berek Halfhand, and that was about all that happened, unfortunately.
For the reader post, Silver Adept notes that it would have been better to have Covenant either understand little of the story-telling, or have everyone do their best to explain it to him. Donaldson will later go for the latter option, but I would have liked it here, too; we’re supposed to be learning about the world, after all.
They further note that the description of Atiaran singing is “specific to [] European and European-derived musical traditions”, which I note because I get the impression that Donaldson made an effort not to make the Land too European.
Let me begin with the next chapter, then! And fair warning, this chapter contains rape, so proceed with caution.
Chapter 7: Lena
We open on Covenant, who stays separate from the group as everyone embraces. He feels trapped, as a “leper’s claustrophobia [], a leper’s fear of crowds, of unpredictable behavior” is on him (which would work better if he wasn’t outside of the crowd already, and I really have to wonder how many crowds he’s met in the last year to know this…). He thinks that the Stonedownors want him to be a hero like Berek (actually, I think that’s only Lena and maybe Atiaran), and then walks away with a “stiff jerk of repudiation”. He complains about how ridiculous all this is, and says that the “kind of heroism” Berek performed is impossible for him because he’s a leper. I think that’s also in no small part because you’re not remotely a heroic person at present, Covenant.
He then remembers that Foul talked about a confrontation, and realises that he might well be led to a confrontation with him. He’s “trapped”, he finds, because he obviously can’t “play the hero in some dream war”, but he does need to go through the “dream” to get out, and standing still and “[trying] to stay sane” won’t work, either. He stops walking, and then sinks into a panic attack as his hopes for the Land fall away, and he’s stuck being not being able to go on and not being able to stop. Though I don’t really care about Covenant’s trouble with the Land, this isn’t badly written, and I do like to see Covenant come to a situation he can’t deal with with cynicism.
Just then, Lena comes running after him with her gravelling pot (which I find quite sweet), and when she’s reached him, she asks if he isn’t well. Covenant “lashes at her”, saying that he isn’t well at all, and nothing’s been since he was divorced, after which he glares at Lena, “defying her to ask what a divorce [is]”. He can’t see Lena’s reaction, but instead of giving him “crude questions or condolences”, like he expects, she tells him there’s a place he can be alone. Yeah, that’s the best thing to do in this situation; she doesn’t know him enough to know what his problems are and what she could say, and in any case, not giving Covenant more to deal with at least can’t hurt.
For his part, Covenant agrees enthusiastically, since he feels his “nerves [are] about to snap”, and he feels violent, so he doesn’t want “anyone to see what happen[s] to him”. Lena leads the way to the Mithil, and from there half a mile downriver to an “old stone bridge”, which Covenant is reluctant to cross because… he thinks that he won’t recognise himself if he comes back (that’s what I gather, at least). He asks where they’re going. Lena answers that they’re going to the far side, where he can be alone. The Stonedownors don’t often go across the Mithil, since they think that the mountains to the west are unfriendly, and the “ill of Doom’s Retreat” behind them has “bent their spirit”. She herself has been all over the mountains in search of suru-pa-maerl images, though, and hasn’t been harmed. Close by the bridge, there’s a place where Covenant won’t be disturbed.
Hmm, while I like the idea of this, I have to wonder if she plans to tell Atiaran where Covenant is, since I could see her trying to find him, at least. She probably does, but I get the feeling that Lena hasn’t thought this through very well. Then… Doom’s Retreat will turn out to be a battlefield that many people died on, and while it certainly makes sense that it’s thought of as an ill place, when we’ll see it, we don’t hear about it having affected the mountains around it, nor does it seem that bad. Then again, the tale of Doom’s Retreat may well have grown over the years, and I doubt that anyone from the Stonedown has seen it for themselves, so I won’t complain. I also kind of wonder what makes Lena so adventurous; maybe Atiaran encourages her in that?
Well, Covenant thinks the bridge looks “untrustworthy” since it isn’t mortared, but he does get on, and the bridge turns out to be steady. At the top of the bridge, he pauses to look down at the Mithil, and he wonders if he can’t simply ignore everything that threatens him, return to the Stonedown and “pretend with blithe guile” to be Berek Halfhand reborn. He decides that he can’t, because he’s a leper and there are “some lies he [cannot] tell”. Good to see he does have some integrity, even if it’s only for selfish reasons… Covenant finds that he’s “pounding his fists on the wall” of the bridge, and tries to look if he’s injured himself, but the light isn’t good enough, so he just follows Lena down the bridge.
We get some description of their route: they go into the mountains for a bit, then turn right and climb a “steep hill”, and then go down a “splintered ravine” back toward the river. The ravine is described (and compared to a ship), and Covenant sees it ends at a swath of sand that ends in “a flat rock promontory jutting into the river”. Lena stops on the sand and empties the gravelling pot in a “shallow basin” she digs out, and soon Covenant squats beside the “fire”. Lena, for her part, goes to stand on the promontory and watches the moon rise above the mountain. There’s some description of that, and of the moon silhouetting Lena, and when the whole valley is in the light, Lena returns to Covenant. Even though nothing much happens here, it’s a nice sequence for building atmosphere, I find.
Lena asks if she should go. We’re reminded of Covenant’s palms itching “as if he want[s] to strike her for even suggesting that she might stay”, but on the other hand, he’s afraid of the night, and doesn’t want to be alone. Yes, Donaldson, I think we know by now that Covenant is going to do something bad to Lena; if that’s going to happen, could you at least get on with it instead of constantly hinting? Covenant gets up and asks what she wants, “[fighting] to stay neutral”, to which she answers that she wants to know more about him. Covenant winces at this, but then collects himself and tells her to ask, which she does, asking if he’s married. That predictably hits a sore spot with Covenant, and he “whirl[s] to face [Lena]” with “hot distress [in] his eyes and [] bared teeth”. Lena falters and looks away; Covenant sees this and complains about how his “face [has] betrayed him” and he wants to contain himself in front of Lena. Still, she “aggravate[s] his distress more than anything else he [has] encountered”. Maybe it’s time to tell her to leave, then? Covenant doesn’t really answer the question, and asks instead why Lena wants to know. Lena goes to sit by the fire and looks at Covenant, and when she doesn’t answer at once, Covenant paces up and down the sand, “turn[ing] and pull[ing] fiercely at his wedding ring”. I do like the way that Donaldson shows from Covenant’s own perspective that he isn’t doing well at all here… though I’d still love for this scene to progress faster.
Well, Lena answers Covenant’s question by saying that there’s a man, “Triock son of Thuler”, who wants to marry her. He woos her, though she isn’t “of age” to marry yet, so he’ll choose her when she’s ready to marry. If she were old enough, she wouldn’t marry him, though. She does find him a “good man in his way”, as he’s a “good Cattleherd” and defends his “kine” well, and he’s quite tall, but there’s just too “many wonders in the world” and “too much power to know and beauty to share and to create”, and she hasn’t seen the Ranyhyn. Because of that, she can’t marry someone who just appreciates her for her suru-pa-maerl, and she wants instead to go to the Loresraat and keep going through all the trails until she becomes a Lord. “It is said” that that can happen, after all, and does Covenant think so?
To answer Lena’s question, I certainly think it’s possible; if it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any Lords, after all, and even if she means to ask if someone from her background could do that, I’d answer the same, since most people of the Land live in those conditions, and I’d expect at least one person like that to have become a Lord in the past hundreds of years. I’m really not seeing why she wouldn’t think this is possible? Yeah, Atiaran didn’t make it, but she’s been quite clear that that’s the exception. Also… why does she say that “it is said” to be possible to become a Lord? Wouldn’t Atiaran be her primary source for that, and who would she have this from, anyway? This doesn’t make much sense, and it makes her look much too naïve once again (and it doesn’t fit well with her not believing the superstitions about these mountains, either).
Beyond that… I’d still like to know why “Cattleherd” is capitalised. It is used like that in the next books, so it’s not an error, but it does strike me as rather random. Then I notice “kine” (which is an archaic word for “cows”), which I find a bit weird to see used when Lena is reasonably young and she hasn’t used much archaic words otherwise. Finally, I’m not really seeing how this answers Covenant’s question? I guess she might be interested in what marriage is like since she doesn’t plan to marry, but she doesn’t follow up on that, so that’s just a guess.
Covenant, for his part, hardly hears her, because he’s “enraged and undercut” by a memory of Joan, and because of it, the “hollowness of his dream” becomes obvious. He’s convinced that the Land isn’t real, and it’s just a “torment that he inflict[s] upon himself in subconscious, involuntary revolt against his disease and loss”, which I don’t find very plausible, given that he’s never had anything like this before in the previous year. He complains a bit about how bad this is, then goes to sit with his back to Lena and hugs his knees as hard as he can to keep himself under control. He then asks Lena how her people marry, and Lena explains. When “a man and a woman” have become friends and wish to marry, they tell the Circle of elders (and I really feel that “elders” should be capitalised here). The elders then have them wait for a season to make sure that their friendship is “secure”, and there’s no tensions between them that might make them unhappy later on. After that, everyone gathers in the centre of the Stonedown, and the elders take the couple in their arms and ask them if they want to share “life, in joy and sorrow, work and rest, peace and struggle”, to renew the Land. The couple answers that they “choose to share the blessings and the service of the Earth”, and then the Stonedown says that it is good, and wishes them “life and joy and power” during their marriage. The day is then spent in celebration, and the “new mates” teach “new games and dances and songs” to the people of the Stonedown, so that the Stonedown stays happy, and “communion and pleasure do not fail in the Land”.
That’s not uninteresting, though I think this would be more memorable in action (which won’t happen), and I’d like it more if it didn’t occur in what’s supposed to be a tense scene. Lena now goes to tell the story of how Atiaran and Trell married, which is also nice to have as background information, but not nearly necessary enough to justify dragging this scene further out. Well, their marriage was a “bold day”, and the “elders who teach [the Stonedown]” have often talked about it. During the whole “season of assurance”, Trell went up in the mountains, looking in every forgotten and newly-exposed place for a bit of “orcrest—a precious and many-powered rock”. The South Plains were experiencing a drought at that time, after all, and Mithil Stonedown suffered from a famine. Just before the marriage, he found what he sought: a bit of orcrest “smaller than a fist”. And so, after the marriage ceremony, he and Atiaran saved the Stonedown. Atiaran “sang a deep prayer to the Earth” (which the Stonedowners had forgotten, but which was still known in the Loresraat), while Trell crushed the orcrest in his hand. Thunder sounded, and a bolt of lightning shot up from the crushed orcrest, and then the sky “turned black with thunderheads” and it began to rain. So the famine was broken, and the Stonedown was happy. It is a nice tale, I have to give it that, and again we have worldbuilding that isn’t infodumping, so I like it!
Covenant, for his part, doesn’t like it at all, because the tale “[strikes] him like a mockery of his pains and failures”, and he can’t contain his rage at it. He then runs toward the river and throws a stone in it, before ranting about how he gave Joan “riding boots” for the wedding. …It’s quite a bit better than yelling at Lena, I have to give him that. We now switch to Lena’s perspective, as she walks toward Covenant and stops behind him, not knowing quite what to say. She decides to ask what happened to Joan, to which Covenant “[t]hickly” says that she’s gone. Lena asks how she died, and Covenant says that he died instead of her, that she divorced him (and that their marriage was “[t]erminated”) when he most needed her. …I’m unfortunately having some trouble taking this wholly seriously. Lena gets indignant and asks why something like that would happen “while there is life” (so don’t her people have a concept of divorce?). Covenant says, getting more and more angry, that he isn’t alive and rants about how he’s a leper and lepers are “ugly and filthy” and “abominable”. Lena asks how that can possibly be, because he isn’t abominable, and what world dares to treat him like that? Covenant gets even angrier, and he says that his world is real, fact, and the “kind of thing that kills you if you don’t believe it”. The Land is a “nightmare”.
Lena gets “sudden courage”, and says she doesn’t believe it. Covenant’s world may be as bad as he says, but the Land is real. Covenant freezes at this, and asks with “preternatural quietness” if she’s trying to “drive [him] crazy”. Lena’s startled and scared by his tone, and she loses her courage; then Covenant “whirl[s] and [strikes] her a stinging slap across the face”. …Yeah, I think something like that was to be expected; given how stressed Covenant was, I’m not surprised that he lashes out like this. It does still suck for Lena, of course, and it’s not a bad way to show Covenant finally doing something bad to her… unlike what we’ll be getting now.
Now we’re getting into the rape scene, so I’ll clearly mark it so you can skip to the discussion if you’d like (or skip to the end to avoid it altogether):
Begin of rape scene
Well, Lena stumbles back to the gravelling, and Covenant quickly follows, “his face contorted into a wild grin”. Lena has a last look at him, and she feels sure he wants to murder her; this thought paralyses her and leaves her “dumb and helpless” as he approaches. It turns out that’s not what he wants, though, as he tears her shift off, and then looks at her “high, perfect breasts and her short slip, with grim triumph in his eyes”. Then he tears off the rest of her clothing and pushes her to the ground. Lena now wants to resist, but she find she can’t, and she’s “helpless with anguish”. A moment later, Covenant drops on top of her and rapes her. Lena finally manages to scream, but even as she does, she knows it’s too late and “[s]omething that her people [think] of as a gift [has] been torn from her”.
Covenant (whose perspective we now switch to), doesn’t “feel like a taker”, though. His “climax flood[s] him as if he [has] fallen into a Mithil of molten fury”, and he nearly falls unconscious. Then he loses track of time, and he lies still for what might be hours for all he knows, hours in which “his world could have crumbled, unheeded”. After a while he remembers that Lena exists and feels her sobbing beneath him, so he gets up and looks down at her, seeing “blood on her loins”. He abruptly feels dizzy, and walks over to the shelf of rock and vomits into the Mithil, after which he falls asleep again. He doesn’t hear Lena get up, pull her shredded clothing together, say something, or climb away. He only hears the “long lament of the river”, only sees the “ashes of his burnt-out passion”, and only feels “the dampness of the rock on his cheeks like tears”. And there the scene, and the chapter, ends!
End of rape scene
How can I do this… I think I’ll start with the smaller things about this scene: I do like that we get Lena’s perspective during this scene, and I think Donaldson handles it reasonably well (and I note that he gets rid of his more purple prose for her perspective, which helps quite a bit to convey the urgency of this scene). I further like that Lena freezing up is not portrayed as a failing on her part; she’s just too scared to do much, and the narration doesn’t blame her for it, or suggest that she should have done more. Then… I don’t quite know what to make of the emphasis on Lena losing her virginity here. I think it might be in part so that Donaldson doesn’t have to outright say it’s rape (that’s the feeling I get, at least), and I wouldn’t mind it if this was a thing… but we never hear about virginity being important to the people of Mithil Stonedown again, so it’s awkward, and I really don’t care about the implication that losing her virginity is the most important thing here.
Then… I’m quite sure Donaldson put this scene in to show Covenant doing something bad, since him raping Lena doesn’t have much impact on the plot beyond people hating him for it and his guilt influencing his decisions. I can get behind the general idea, though Covenant will be quite hatable without him hurting anyone here, but it’s hardly a good reason to use rape here. I think this would work just as well, for example: Covenant pushes Lena down the ravine they used to come here, and then doesn’t dare to go after her and feels too guilty to inform anyone. Lena survives, but is severely injured. In this example, we have Covenant doing something bad, him showing his cowardice (which will be quite relevant during the book), Lena getting hurt, and all that without rape. Because of that, it does come across like Donaldson was being edgy here, and I don’t like that.
What I’ve also come to notice is that this scene really doesn’t follow well from both the scene immediately previous and from its foreshadowing. For the first thing, Covenant goes from having a panic attack and hitting Lena to wanting to rape her in the space of a few seconds, which is not anywhere near enough time to make that switch in. Furthermore, I’m not seeing how he got to that idea; maybe it’s supposed to be because he thought about Joan just now, and he realised that he could get sex from Lena? If that was the case, though, we should have had more of him thinking about Joan to make that plausible. For the second thing… we have had Covenant leering at girls Lena’s age before now, so that does track, but when he was with Lena, he held back from trying to do anything sexual with her (and he said that he didn’t have the courage for it), so I doubt that he’d lose all of his control even during a panic attack.
To express myself a bit clearer, the setup for the rape scene isn’t badly done, but with the scene immediately before it, I get the impression that Donaldson meant for it to build toward the rape… when it just shows Covenant having a panic attack and not even thinking much about Lena. The setup also doesn’t match well with the payoff, since it takes quite a bit of prodding for Covenant to hit Lena when he was quite fine with often being angry at her earlier; given that he was much more reluctant to show that he’s sexually interested in her, I find it rather doubtful that he’d suddenly be alright with that, and much more so that he’d want to rape Lena. Finally, he switches to rape mode much too quickly to be realistic (and I find he behaves like a caricature after that, too).
A final thing that bothers me about this is that Covenant never sexually assaults (or rapes) anyone again and doesn’t even think about it, as far as I recall. I certainly don’t mind that, but if he’s constantly creeping on Lena and eventually rapes here, that behaviour shouldn’t disappear for good after the rape! It frankly makes me wonder if Donaldson first only wrote the rape, and only put the foreshadowing in later, to make it seem less out of the blue… In any case, this doesn’t help very much with making me hate Covenant, and given that the rape makes little sense for him to do, I find it quite hard to hate him about this at all.
In conclusion, while this scene is written well enough that I don’t hate it, I absolutely don’t care for it, either. The rape scene being mostly there to show us that Covenant is to be hated is bad enough on its own (especially since it can easily be done without rape), but since it can’t even manage that, I find it rather gratuitous, and if I’d been Donaldson’s editor, I’d have told him to get rid of the rape scene entirely. (…Come to think of it, I wonder if the rather slow pace of the previous chapters might be because Donaldson wanted to build up to the rape scene, especially given that the next chapters will go quite a bit faster. Whether or not that’s true, I’d certainly have got rid of the slow pacing, too.)
So yeah, I really don’t like this chapter at all, and I wish Donaldson had gone with something else, but now I’m done with it, at least! Next time, we’ll get underway with the quest to Revelstone, and we’ll learn more about how the Land works. Until then!
(no subject)
Friday, 5 September 2025 16:08 (UTC)Given the characterization of Covenant so far, the scene would have made more consistent sense to me if it were more violent? Because while Covenant has been creeping on Lena this entire time, he's also been getting progressively more angry at her and upset that she keeps asking him questions about his situation and treating him like he's a human being instead of the unclean leper that he sees himself as. If this were a lashing-out, a decision made to do something sufficiently beyond the pale so that Lena would start treating him like the outcast he is, that would make more sense to me. So if we're supposed to hate Covenant (and then, inexplicably, stick with his perspective through the rest of the book and the series), him committing very violent acts makes way more sense to me than what you've summarized here. Even if we want to make Covenant out of his senses while he does this, the narrative and the desire to make Covenant unlikable is better-served by him hurting Lena while he's at it, striking her while he assaults her, or otherwise making it so that it's clear that his motivation is violence, and he is using a sexual assault to make that violence more of a problem.
Outside of that, Covenant's self-loathing is making it hard for me to believe that he's a three-dimensional character. At this point in the narrative, even if you're still working on the underlying theory that the Land and its inhabitants are a very detailed dream/hallucination, and that you may have fallen into a coma or similar, at a certain point, you decide that you have to go along with it, since you're not waking up from it. Covenant could still be doing things that are supposed to test the reality of his "delusion," but by now, he should be resigned to having to go through with it. So far, though, Covenant seems to have a very one-track mind about how he's not fit for people and he's trying to make everyone else believe that as much as possible, and he's making exactly no headway on that with these people. So he's escalating, see above paragraph, but there's got to be something else that Covenant has going for him other than "leper, leper, leper, leper." Where's the "mushroom, mushroom," and what is it?
At least from these summaries, it sounds like Donaldson is vastly better at worldbuilding than he is at characterization, but he seems to insist that he's writing a story that's about the characters more than the world. Instead of trying to keep the focus on Covenant's internal monologue and self-hate, why not stick with the mystery presented to him of the Land, Foul, and the situation that Covenant finds himself in. There will still be more than enough opportunities for polemic or for revealing characterization through the ways that Covenant tries to solve the mystery, and what things he overlooks or insists upon as being part of the solution.
There's quite possibly an excellent novel in here about someone who lands in a mystery, and everyone around him insists he has to be the Chosen One, and he basically refuses to assume the mantle and looks for a way out of this that doesn't require him being the Chosen One. (The Matrix, but instead of Neo slowly coming to embrace the idea of being the Chosen One, he continues to insist that he's not the one, and he's relieved when the Oracle confirms it for him, and so forth.) It's a shame that we're getting this, instead of playing to Donaldson's strengths.
(no subject)
Saturday, 6 September 2025 17:30 (UTC)It sounds like the assault does nothing to advance the narrative, nor does it do much to change our understanding of Covenant's character, and therefore it could have been easily cut without damaging anything. (That probably also didn't help with getting the book sold, if he refused to cut the scene when the editors asked.) It sounds like it's written well in terms of prose and technical aspects, but that's all it has going for it.
Yeah, the best I can say about is that Donaldson didn't write anything offensive (other than writing this scene at all, of course), and this his words fit what he tries to convey. As for the impact on the narrative... next chapter, Triock shows up to confront Covenant, and Atiaran learns that Lena was raped; despite her hate for Covenant, she keeps him company for a long while, but doesn't quite go to Revelstone. Later on, Covenant orders a Ranyhyn (magic horse) to come by Lena each year as a "reparation", and that's it!
If this subplot were to be removed, we'd indeed have a plot with nearly the same shape, and we'd have several less chapters and a few thousand words less. I guess Donaldson just really wanted to show us that Covenant is a bad person, but we can see that perfectly fine from the rest of his behaviour, and it quite frustrates me that Donaldson never thought to remove this, and that it puts the entire plot on hold.
Covenant using violence
(nods) That would fit much better with everything we've got so far, and Covenant will be lashing out to people later on, so that's quite good! My only objection is that he doesn't resort to physical violence later on, but that would make it more powerful when he does do it here (and it fits with my own idea, which I do like). It'd also be a good way to show us that Covenant's going too far in his rejection of the Land (something which I'd love to see more of). I've got no idea why Donaldson didn't go with the obvious course with this, other than that it wouldn't have been "edgy" enough.
(and then, inexplicably, stick with his perspective through the rest of the book and the series)
I think the appeal might be seeing him improve, which he does, but given that you have to slog through this book to get there, I don't think that many readers will bother sticking with it long enough to get there.
characterisation
I quite agree there, too; the complaining gets rather tiring after a while, and his general unpleasantness doesn't do much to improve it. And yes, he really should accept that this is a thing and go with it. It wouldn't even have to mean that he loses his grip on reality or whatever, no matter what he says; as long as he stays aware that he's not on Earth, he should be perfectly fine! But I guess that would mean he couldn't be "nihilistic leper" anymore, and that would just not do.
That aside, we will be getting to see more of Covenant outside of that from next chapter on, though he'll mostly end up just going along with what's going on around him, and generally being a bit of a coward. (And I just realised how little agency Covenant actually shows in this book! I've read quite some complaints about the new protagonist we'll meet in The Wounded Land being passive, but at least she takes initiative sometimes!)
characterisation and worldbuilding
Yep, the worldbuilding is indeed better than the characterisation in this book! If the protagonist had a less intense personality than Covenant, I might find it tolerable to have them front and center (though I'd still find the Land and the people in it more interesting), but here, it grates, especially since very little has happened. From now on, we will fortunately be getting into the mystery, though I think that it'll be people outside of Covenant being engaged with that... We'll only be getting the polemic next book, but I do remember it as being much more revealing of Covenant's character.
(As an aside, I think this issue is why I like the Second Chronicles better: the characterisation is more developed, of course, but Donaldson also puts it a bit more to the background, so we can have a good adventure, too, and I like that more.)
There's quite possibly an excellent novel in here about someone who lands in a mystery, and everyone around him insists he has to be the Chosen One, and he basically refuses to assume the mantle and looks for a way out of this that doesn't require him being the Chosen One.
Hmmm, we do get some of that next book, when Covenant actually looks for ways out (instead of just trailing along like he does in this one), and some more with the other protagonist in the Second Chronicles (who comes to be called "the Chosen One", by the way!), but not so much as we could have had here. (Maybe his Mordant's Need duology has something like that, but I haven't read it yet.) Given that he doesn't do it badly, it makes me wonder what we could have had here, too... This whole book could have been much better with more editing and rewrites, I'm sure, and though that's frustrating, I do want to thank you for drawing my attention to the good parts!
(no subject)
Sunday, 7 September 2025 00:25 (UTC)Although, the way that you're telling us about the later parts of the book and how Covenant doesn't really return to any of the things he does early on makes me wonder if we could have had a decent story about a person who thinks that he's the worst person ever, but despite his own beliefs (and perhaps, because he believes that being marked with disease is God's punishment of him for his wickedness), time and time again, when presented with the opportunity to enact what he thinks he would do, he passes on the opportunity or dismisses it out of hand as not something he's interested in at all.
It makes me wonder what the polemic is going to be about this, especially since all those years ago, someone recommended this series to me as good Christian fantasy. It feels like it's shaping up to be a story about grace and how accepting God into your life makes it possible for you to do much more than you could with your otherwise sinful human nature, but if that's the case, the sinful nature part is being laid on pretty thick here.
(That said, still better than the protagonists of Left Behind.)
Well, if things do (eventually) improve, we can stick it out, but yeah, I'm still pretty convinced that younger-me had the right idea to bounce off this book as just not having enough of what was desired to read.
(no subject)
Sunday, 7 September 2025 12:31 (UTC)Yeah, that's probably why Donaldson chose to do so, and I fully share your distaste for it. And if Donaldson had chosen something else, he could have made it fit with Covenant's personality, and made it more powerful! The best I can say is that he doesn't do it again...
I'd quite like that idea, too, and it'd draw out the difference between Covenant's perception of himself and who he really is. Donaldson won't end up going down that road (though he does do some similar stuff in the later books), though.
It makes me wonder what the polemic is going to be about this, especially since all those years ago, someone recommended this series to me as good Christian fantasy. It feels like it's shaping up to be a story about grace and how accepting God into your life makes it possible for you to do much more than you could with your otherwise sinful human nature, but if that's the case, the sinful nature part is being laid on pretty thick here.
Oh, the polemic I referred to is about how much it matters whether or not it's a dream, and to what extent Covenant has responsbilities to the Land, not so much anything Christian. (And I have to wonder if the recommender made it as far as The Power That Preserves, where Covenant has the chance to find belonging with a Christian group and rejects it, and that's shown as a good choice.)
The series won't go in the direction you're thinking of, by the way; Covenant first tries to stay innocent by not using his power, but eventually learns that he can't avoid being guilty, so he might as well use his power. I don't know if Donaldson already had that in mind here, but it's not a bad way to go on from this book, I find (and much better than the Left Behind option...).
Well, if things do (eventually) improve, we can stick it out, but yeah, I'm still pretty convinced that younger-me had the right idea to bounce off this book as just not having enough of what was desired to read.
I suspect I'd do the same thing now if I came across it for the first time (younger-me was interested enough in the flashy parts to look over this, though I remember never caring as much about this book as the sequels). After all, even if it does get better, you shouldn't have to slog through a lot of bad stuff first; that's why I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone, even though I do like some things in it.
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 12:35 (UTC)Ugh, agreed. I haaaaate the old "oh but after the first 10,000 pages it gets really good!" excuse. If it's not at least semi-decent from the beginning, I ain't sticking around for some promised holy grail of actual good writing to possibly eventually show up.
I also agree with you on the world-building; the setting here is really interesting with some truly striking visuals and creative ideas. Too bad it's overshadowed by the fact that we're stuck following this miserable whiny asshole around while the plot moves at the pace of an arthritic snail.
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 19:51 (UTC)I haven't had the opportunity to have much lucid dreams yet (and I've never exactly bothered to do so), so I can't say whether I'd do that, but I have the strong impression that I would; it's just more satisfying to do so.
Ugh, agreed. I haaaaate the old "oh but after the first 10,000 pages it gets really good!" excuse. If it's not at least semi-decent from the beginning, I ain't sticking around for some promised holy grail of actual good writing to possibly eventually show up.
I do have the tendency to come up with that argument, since I've stuck around until it became good and that tends to overshadow the bad parts for me, but it's not guaranteed that someone else will have the same experience, and so I can hardly ask anyone to suffer through it. (And also, if you can drop a series if it turns bad, you can drop it if it begins bad; bad is bad, after all.)
I also agree with you on the world-building; the setting here is really interesting with some truly striking visuals and creative ideas. Too bad it's overshadowed by the fact that we're stuck following this miserable whiny asshole around while the plot moves at the pace of an arthritic snail.
Exactly! I do wish Donaldson would have started merging the worldbuilding with the plot from the start, though; as interesting as the orcrest sounds, for example, I find it more interesting when we see it in action next book.
(no subject)
Tuesday, 9 September 2025 12:40 (UTC)I think spending 25 odd years writing creatively is what trained me into lucid dreaming. I had so much practise in controlling imaginary scenarios that it bled into my dreams. Sometimes I can even consciously choose what I'm going to dream about, or decide to nope out of a dream because I don't like where it's going.
You're way more patient and forgiving than me, which might be at least partially due to the age gap. I'm old and grumpy and not inclined to waste my time on tedious and offensive bullshit, and especially not if it carries on for hundreds of pages.
(no subject)
Tuesday, 9 September 2025 15:19 (UTC)Maybe I'll bother learning it after all, then!
You're way more patient and forgiving than me, which might be at least partially due to the age gap. I'm old and grumpy and not inclined to waste my time on tedious and offensive bullshit, and especially not if it carries on for hundreds of pages.
Well, patience and forgiveness are easier to give when you've already suffered through the bullshit and happen to have formed an overly bright memory of it. If I were to do read something like this now (and that might well happen, since I want to know more about Donaldson's other works to become better at this commentary), I doubt anywhere near as patient and forgiving.Beyond that, I just want to be patient and forgiving in my reviews and when commenting, because I think that makes me better at that. Maybe it is youthful folly, but it hasn't brought me to bad places yet, so I'll keep going. (And I have to say I'm not much inclined to keep doing this, actually; I just want to finish it because I started it and I find it rather rude to give up.)Let me rephrase this, since my original reply was somewhat rude... while the age gap might well play a role (and I can't tell, since I haven't been that old yet), I think it's rather due to me actively trying to make myself be more patient and forgiving in my reviews. I find it quite easy to nitpick and be uncharitable in general, and given that I've often had my readers correct me on that, I'd like to give myself some practice with it.
In this specific case, I think I find it easy because I'm quite familiar with (and actively seek out) the good parts, so that gives me a rose-coloured perception of the series. I'm also not sure if I'd actually put up with "bullshit"? I have read some books (like TSIASOS) where I had to make myself read them, and I certainly wouldn't have proceeded with them if I hadn't told myself to.
That aside... I found your claim rather reductive, and I didn't like what I saw as my own achievements being ignored, so it rather rubbed me the wrong way, which seeped into my comment.
(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 05:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 05:25 (UTC)Well, thanks for the compliment, and I apologise for being so mean to you before!
(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 06:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 07:07 (UTC)That's good to hear!
(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 11:09 (UTC)By the way, I've been meaning to ask - what even happens to that asshole Covenant in the end? My dad can't tell me!
(no subject)
Thursday, 11 September 2025 19:37 (UTC)(And I at least I bothered to tone my comment down of my own accord... Oh well, it's done now.)
By the way, I've been meaning to ask - what even happens to that asshole Covenant in the end? My dad can't tell me!
That depends on what end you exactly mean (and I'm not surprised that your father didn't know, since you won't know unless you've read to the end of the particular series), so I'll just cover everything:
Covenant survives the First Chronicles. He does quite little during this book and The Illearth War, though he does get better qua behaviour; in The Power That Preserves, he finally gets around to fighting Lord Foul (which might be something to look forward to). During that book, he's also in a quite bad state, and eventually is saved from death by divine intervention.
He's still there during the Second Chronicles, which take place ten years later. By that time, I find he has become much more bearable, and he does do things, even though he's in a much harder position than in the First Chronicles. He's also been fatally wounded on Earth (which stays relevant throughout the series), and eventually dies of it; in the Land, he is murdered by Foul, but then comes back as a ghost, which ensures his victory.
During the Last Chronicles, he occasionally shows up as a ghost during the first two books, before he is resurrected at the end of the second book. He then spends the other two books being mostly superfluous, but he does survive to the very end.
(no subject)
Friday, 12 September 2025 12:21 (UTC)And I really appreciate that you were that sensitive and thoughtful. Those are always admirable qualities. And either way no harm was done.
Yeah, I don't know at what point he gave up on the series and he probably doesn't remember because it would have been thirty odd years ago. He told me he enjoyed it for a while but ran out of patience with Covenant's miserable assholery. I also remember him telling me the guy had leprosy. I was a kid at the time and had a vague understanding that this meant arms and legs falling off, so I asked about that. Dad said actually he just lost a finger and I was like "what, that's it?" and was very disappointed!
...well that sounds perfectly ridiculous. Dad clearly dodged a bullet and thanks for the summary!
(no subject)
Friday, 12 September 2025 20:22 (UTC)I'm quite happy to hear that!
For the rest... I guess your father would have stopped somewhere in this book or the next (because Covenant really does improve after that). I wouldn't say he dodged a bullet with either The Power That Preserves or with the Second Chronicles (and I find those more fun than the First Chronicles, really), but "perfectly ridiculous" is very much how I want to describe the Last Chronicles. And I'm always happy to provide, even if this one is so stripped-down as to be somewhat incomprehensible.
As for his leprosy, I'd have found it rather silly if he did have limbs falling off and such, honestly; leprosy takes time, after all, and I can't see a way to keep Covenant away from doctors for years, if not decades, on end without making him a different character. We will be seeing Covenant's leprosy get worse later on, by the way (still no rotting limbs, but his eyesight failing and such)!
(no subject)
Saturday, 13 September 2025 01:27 (UTC)I was a kid when I made that assumption so of course it did not occur to me that would be silly. At least the bastard suffers.
(no subject)
Saturday, 13 September 2025 09:49 (UTC)Oh, of course, and I wouldn't say that anyone's silly for thinking that, just that it would've been silly if that was indeed in the series. And yes, Covenant will be suffering a whole lot!
(Now to start work on the next chapter of BattleAxe...)
(no subject)
Saturday, 13 September 2025 11:02 (UTC)I'd be totally fine with his leg rotting off. Or better still his wedding tackle.
AWESOME.
I salute your courage! 🫡
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 16:54 (UTC)From everything you've shown us in these first seven chapters, Covenant insisting on trying to keep his innocence and to stay out of everything first, and then when finally maneuvered into a position where he has to act, deciding that since he's broken his innocence, he may as well go "in for a penny, in for a pound" about all of it is entirely in character for him. He's been trying to hold himself apart from the society around him in our world, he's trying to hold himself apart from the inhabitants of the Land, all to feed his belief that he's already past the point of redemption. It all feeds in toward the moment where he has to act,
I don't know if this will be the narrative structure, but in the better meta-novel we're building, I feel like the passivity could be constructed better for better narrative reasons, like "butterfly effect, can't make too many changes or I'll wreck this strange place" that justify his underlying self-loathing and belief in his worthlessness, and then, after having been forced to act, we can see that his actual weakness is not passivity, but absolutism, and so, since he's failed at avoiding interference, it no longer matters how much he interferes from that point on, and there we could see a rapid descent into villainy and being the entity that Lord Foul most wants for the Land, before eventually pulling himself out of his stall. (Or getting pulled out of it by the relevant entities.)
With a structure like that, Donaldson could focus on the worldbuilding, and then at the point of action, show us just how much attention Covenant was paying to all of that by making his actions have the greatest impact possible.
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 20:52 (UTC)That's a quite good analysis, and lovely ideas! For your first idea, even though I can't remember it happening in specifically that way, he very much has the tendency to commit entirely and extravagantly when the situation is dire or pressing enough, and that often goes coupled with him having crossed his moral boundaries before that, so it really does seem to be a pattern (which I hadn't noticed before now!).
As for your original idea, that also sounds good! It'd work quite fine at giving us a "how can this situation possibly improve" moment (and I wouldn't mind seeing a clear display of how damaging his current philosophy is), I'd find it less irritating than Covenant's constant refusal to commit to a course of action, and I like imagining just how he could be brought back from that. And having him tear up a place we've come to love would be good for impact, too... I don't mind the way Donaldson goes, but this would be more cathartic.
(As an aside, I'm quite happy to have you as a regular reader, especially since you're quite experienced at the same thing I do.)
(no subject)
Wednesday, 10 September 2025 04:12 (UTC)I'm looking forward to seeing how this gets done, even if it's something where I go, "You did that when you had this perfectly good solution sitting in front of you and you didn't take it?
(no subject)
Wednesday, 10 September 2025 06:30 (UTC)Yep, that was what I was aiming at (and also that you've been doing it for eleven years now, and I just for two and a half, which also makes a difference)!
It's nice doing it for people, but a lot of it is the fun of reading the books with an eye toward what they do well and what they don't do well.
Indeed! I recognise it from my own stuff; especially with BattleAxe, teasing out what I like and don't like, and what Douglass does right and what not is something I can spend quite some time on (with this, I'm not far enough in yet, and with my third project, I'm a bit too nitpicky for it). All the same, I do like having people to talk to, especially since the group I have doesn't hesitate to point out any errors I make, and they always come up with interesting ideas.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this gets done, even if it's something where I go, "You did that when you had this perfectly good solution sitting in front of you and you didn't take it?
I'll try to make sure the next part gets out sooner than two months from now!
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 12:14 (UTC)Ugh, tell me about it. Also I might not be Christian myself but I did get pretty extensively educated about Christian values and such because I went to a religious school, and I'm not seeing any particularly noticeable parallels.
Your avatar is super cute! I just recently re-watched Princess Mononoke, as it happens!
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 16:35 (UTC)I kind of wish I'd stuck around to ask more questions about it, but the person who was recommending it to me was absolutely pinging my "I will cheerfully evangelize to you in the same manner as a Chick Tract" radar, and I mostly wanted to get away before that actually started.
This was just before Left Behind came out and got very popular, so maybe if it had been a little later, it would have been Left Behind being pushed at me instead of Covenant.
(no subject)
Tuesday, 9 September 2025 11:35 (UTC)Do you know who drew it?
Dang, whatever happened to my little figurine of one of those cuties? Surely it's around here somewhere. It used to sit on top of my work computer's monitor but I would've taken it with me after [INSERT NAME OF DUMBASS BOSS HERE] decided I was no longer needed. *muttermutterfuckingdumbassmutter*
Ick. I always run for the hills when I know someone's about to start trying to shove some ideology or other down my throat.
I wouldn't be surprised. I actually read part of the first Left Behind book and that thing is pure propaganda poorly disguised as a "novel" (this comment brought to you by the letter P!). But this thing? I am REALLY not seeing anything resembling Christian allegory of any kind. I mean this isn't exactly Narnia we're dealing with. What the heck does "miserable self-pitying asshole goes to fantasy land" have to do with anything that's in Christian doctrine? By the sound of it he doesn't go through anything resembling a redemption arc.
(no subject)
Wednesday, 10 September 2025 04:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Saturday, 6 September 2025 09:01 (UTC)Because it just wouldn't be lame high fantasy written by a straight man without gratuitous rape, now would it?
Whine a little louder why don't you, you defeatist little crybaby?
REAL mature. 🙄
Now I'm just picturing a giant rat.
Oh get OVER yourself! Christ.
Anne Rice, is that you?
Horribleness aside, what even prompted him to do this anyway?
What's even the point of writing a book where the protagonist is intentionally written as an irredeemably horrible person? To be OMG EDGY? No wonder my dad gave up on the series; he just couldn't stand reading about this disgusting POS.
(no subject)
Saturday, 6 September 2025 17:55 (UTC)Because it just wouldn't be lame high fantasy written by a straight man without gratuitous rape, now would it?
Apparently not! Donaldson does seem to have learned his lesson here, though, since we won't be getting any more rape (and barely any sexual assault) in this series any more... or he may have just transferred it to his Gap series, from what I've heard. Well, at least we won't have to deal with it!
Whine a little louder why don't you, you defeatist little crybaby?
Yeah, I'm getting quite fed up with his endless complaining, too. No, Covenant, being a leper doesn't mean you can't do anything; you're just coming up with excuses to sink further into your nihilism and refuse to help.
REAL mature. 🙄
It's more mature than yelling at people, at least...
Now I'm just picturing a giant rat.
For my part, I'm picturing a university organised like a beehive, since "raat" means "honeycomb" in Dutch (and a quick look at Wiktionary shows that that's the most well-known language that has "raat", so he might have just got it from there). It's not one of Donaldson's better names, I find.
Oh get OVER yourself! Christ.
I can kind of get why feels that way, but he really should have walked away during her story, especially if his vaunted self-discipline is as good as it is.
Horribleness aside, what even prompted him to do this anyway?
Donaldson flipping the "RAPIST" switch in his head, I guess! It just doesn't follow from the context at all, and it ruins the entire scene.
(Well, according to the later books, he did it because his "reborn sexuality" was too much for him, but that's quite a bit of nonsense, since we don't see any of that from his perspective, he was quite able to control himself earlier on, and he still only has a few moments in which to get overwhelmed. I meant to address that here, but I forgot, so you'll see more on that next time!)
What's even the point of writing a book where the protagonist is intentionally written as an irredeemably horrible person? To be OMG EDGY? No wonder my dad gave up on the series; he just couldn't stand reading about this disgusting POS.
Yeah, that seems to be what Donaldson was going for, and it's certainly not a good way to write a book! It doesn't help that the book's not very well-written in any respect, either, as I'll certainly be complaining about later.
(no subject)
Sunday, 7 September 2025 00:39 (UTC)It's fine to give your characters problems, but in order to be a halfway decent protagonist you cannot allow them to constantly whine about it. It's the sign of a weak person and therefore a weak character. Like dude you lost a finger and are otherwise perfectly fine. Something tells me you'll be okay.
To me, this is the mark of selfish privilege and very similar to what Paolini does with his own whiny protagonists. Specifically, it's wallowing and indulging in self-righteous nihilism, and that's something you can only "get away with" if you actually have it pretty damn easy. If you have actual problems and are in an actually dangerous situation (or due to be in the foreseeable future) you have no realistic choice other than to stop thinking about yourself all the time and be proactive because if you don't get up off your backside and do something, you or someone else will DIE.
So basically what we have here is a pizza cutter: all edge and no point. Lovely.
(no subject)
Sunday, 7 September 2025 12:40 (UTC)Good analysis! With Covenant, though, he does end up nearly dying in The Power That Preserves because he'd rather "think about himself" all the time than take care of himself. Then again, he comes across as passively suicidal by then, so I'd say that dying is a realistic choice for him at that point.
So basically what we have here is a pizza cutter: all edge and no point. Lovely.
He's not as bad as other authors is the most I can say...
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 11:52 (UTC)And nobody would have bothered to shed a tear.
True, he's got NOTHING on Janine Cross, to say the least. *shudder*
(no subject)
Monday, 8 September 2025 19:58 (UTC)As long as he gave his ring to someone else, I certainly wouldn't!
Oh yeah, I think even Newcomb pales in comparison to her.