Book #111 of 2021:
The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #1)
In the first Thomas Covenant trilogy, the titular antihero resisted the appeal of the fantasy realm that summoned him from our reality, but gradually came to decide that its ideals were worth fighting for even if he could only accept that preservation as a dreamlike reflection of his own self-respect. At the beginning of this new cycle, he’s pulled in again after a decade of relative stability to find that three-and-a-half millennia have passed for the Land, during which its traditional health and beneficence have been corrupted into a chaotic wasteland. Together with Linden Avery, a doctor who unwittingly accompanies him and has her own inner demons to confront, he faces the idea that — as expressed in typical morose Stephen R. Donaldson fashion — “There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.”
That’s a powerful thesis to explore and challenge, and it’s always a thrill to see this setting and its indelible characters, particularly once the Haruchai and the Search show up late in this initial volume. (My heart soared at Pitchwife’s introduction, as it seems to do on every reread.) Linden is a worthwhile and intriguing addition to the series too, although she’ll prove herself more in further sequels. But she’s an appealing perspective already, another protagonist capable of extreme and surprising choices in dire circumstances, of pushing on when all hope appears lost, and it helps that neither she nor her companion is as contemptible as he was at the start of Lord Foul’s Bane. The author even resists the urge to make rape a plot point for once, although he does still use that language to describe the treatment of the landscape.
It’s that Sunbane element itself that doesn’t quite work for me; though it’s probably a more apt climate analogy now than it was on publication in 1980, the concept of an ecosystem that rapidly alternates through days of flood and desert and fertility and pestilence is just too weird and too orderly overall. It feels like the sort of one-note worldbuilding from a weaker Star Trek script, and is a dramatic contrast to the stark realism that’s elsewhere in this tale. I’m also not a big fan of the genre convention of skipping ahead so many centuries on a return visit a la Prince Caspian, which guarantees that most of the familiar figures, establishments, and cultural practices that we’ve enjoyed before will be long gone. There’s no immediate attachment or emotional engagement when the story is effectively a restart, and while in this case that helps put us into the hero’s headspace of grief for what’s passed, the new era needs time to wholly grow on me.
With all that said, however, this novel is better than I had remembered, and I’m fully invested by the end of it, especially for everything it sets up to come next. If you don’t like epic journeys, grandiose and archaic vocabulary, meaty thematic concerns and moral complexities, or tormented individuals who clench their fists and jaws, I suspect this will never be the saga for you. But if you’ve appreciated those aspects of the original Chronicles, I’d definitely recommend continuing on.
[Content warning for suicide, self-harm, domestic abuse, and gore.]
★★★★☆
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