The Lord of The Rings for Adults? (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, The - Stephen Donaldson)

Member Name: JWard

Product:	Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, The - Stephen Donaldson
Date:	11/03/01 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very deep and gripping, great characters

Disadvantages: a little too 'dark' for some

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are, in my opinion, a work of genius.

Stephen Donaldson has done a great job of developing the characters and the world in which they live, known as 'the Land'. The characters are very believable, despite these being fantasy/sci-fi books.

The main character, Thomas Covenant, is a leper. Although the spread of the disease is stopped, the only way he can bear to stay alive is too keep constant vigilance for anything which may harm him. However, during a visit ot his town, he is knocked down by a car and finds himself in the Land.

In the Land, he finds his leprosy apparently healed, and the people he meets hold him in great respect because of his powerful white gold wedding ring, and his resemblence to a long dead hero of the Land, Berek Halfhand. Because he is an outcast in his own land, and has leprosy which he knows to be incurable, he refuses to believe the Land is real, becaoming the Unbeliever.

The characters that Covenant meets add a lot to the story. I felt in some places that I could really connect with some of the characters. Eventually I was willing in my head for Foamfollower the Giant to win a battle, or find his way home.

However, there is one bad point to these books - they may be a little overlong for some. The first book, 'Lord Foul's Bane', is mainly for 'character development' and 'background information' purposes, with not a lot of 'story. Things pick up in the second and third books - 'The Illearth War' and 'The Power That Preserves' - with various quests and battles happening all over the place.

I enjoyed these books greatly, and I am looking forward to reading the other three books in the series, 'The Wounded Land', 'The One Tree' and 'White Gold Wielder'. These books are not for everybody, but for fans of Fantasy writing, such as myself, I higly reccomend these books as they are a
n incredible piece of fantasy storytelling.

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