Book Review: The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #12 of 2022:

The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #1)

While I think the first trilogy of this fantasy saga remains its most thematically brilliant segment, and the second neatly integrates a new co-protagonist for a different perspective and set of psychological issues to work through, I have a great fondness for how thoroughly author Stephen R. Donaldson has revisited the setting for this final outing. Narratively, the threat of the Sunbane in round two seems to appear out of nowhere — requiring a response yet very much feeling like a sequel to any original concerns — but in the Last Chronicles, the history of the Land has a palpable weight and texture upon the present. Delayed effects of prior developments are coming home to roost, and after 21 years away from the series, the writer has a keen eye for picking apart those implications and unraveling tidy resolutions from before, only to ultimately bind them up tighter again.

Our viewpoint figure here is the returning Linden Avery, who is wrenched from a decade of stability to find herself drawn back into that other world where she has access to daunting amounts of magical power and a physician’s deeply-felt duty of care to wield it justly. The earth heroine doesn’t believe she’ll escape alive this time, but she has come seeking her kidnapped adopted son and opposing Roger Covenant, the child of her former companion last glimpsed as an infant in Lord Foul’s Bane and now grown into a man of twisted spite. (As a young parent myself, this is an element I’m particularly curious to rediscover with fresh eyes, though it is mostly setup thus far.) Following her summoning, she is also caught up in the needs of her surroundings, moved to help the descendants of her old friends in that realm as they face the massing of apocalyptic forces and a ruling class of Haruchai who have mistakenly concluded that preventing the teaching of lore and spreading of legends will keep their ignorant subjects safe.

Although millennia have passed, the Land of this era hearkens back to a lot of what was beautiful about its initial introduction, like the majestic Ranyhyn horses that were absent during the depredations of the doctor’s earlier visit. Via those steeds, which have always had the gift of predicting when they’ll be called for and starting out far enough in advance to arrive then, this novel furthermore introduces proper time-travel — for now simply as a brief trip to a moment several centuries after the previous volume, but soon to encompass the full range of days that Donaldson has constructed across this continuity.

If this book falters, it’s in its immediate story, which doesn’t reach much of a conclusion to the threads it raises beyond a genuinely heartwarming redemption arc for the new character Stave. He and the rest of this cast, unfamiliar to Linden and us as the tale opens, grow truly dear as they journey together over these pages. I’ll grant that when you reduce the plot to its major events, it’s perhaps a bit heavy on the walking and talking, even by this author’s usual standards. But it nevertheless represents a rich return to a cherished fictional home and its philosophical arguments so unique to the genre, with plenty of intrigues planted for the titles ahead and a cliffhanger ending that would surely draw even the most recalcitrant of readers onward.

[Content warning for gun violence, self-harm, gore, and mention of rape.]

★★★★☆

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