Book #54 of 2023: The Killing God by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Great God’s War #3) If book 1 of this fantasy trilogy offered an allegorical fable, and the sequel delivered a stream of complicating intrigues amid some thankfully deepened worldbuilding, this closing volume brings everything together for an action-packed finale as the threatened war …
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Book #47 of 2022: The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #4) The grand finale to the Thomas Covenant saga moves slower than one might predict, given the apocalyptic atmosphere and scant amount of time remaining for the Land. The sun and stars have all gone out, the Worm …
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Book #35 of 2022: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #3) This penultimate volume has perhaps the slowest start of any Thomas Covenant story, with literally the first five chapters — one hundred full pages, almost a fifth of the whole text — spent on an extended …
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Book #23 of 2022: Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2) This sequel is rather cleanly bifurcated by a development midway through, and although both of the resulting sections have their strengths, I think the opening is more successful than the close. (Call it a five-star passage followed by …
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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 …
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Book #375 of 2021: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson This reread is the final book I’ll finish in 2021, and since that’s a bit of an occasion and author Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my favorites, I decided to review each of the stories in the collection individually. As …
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Book #348 of 2021: Strange Dreams edited by Stephen R. Donaldson Rating each story in this 1993 collection individually, they average out to just three-out-of-five stars overall for me. It’s an uneven bunch, yet there are still some winners among the lot. (No fives, but 10 fours, along with 11 threes, 5 twos, and 2 …
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Book #276 of 2021: The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #5) I still don’t altogether love this 90s space opera, which has a lot of scenes of people just standing around talking, even in this climactic finale. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue here is …
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Book #264 of 2021: Last Drink Bird Head edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer In this 2009 charity anthology to benefit the ProLiteracy organization, eighty writers answer the prompt, “Who or what is Last Drink Bird Head?” It’s flash fiction, meaning the authors are encouraged to respond off the top of their heads, unplanned …
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Book #260 of 2021: The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #4) The penultimate volume in this Wagnerian space opera is a welcome step back up in quality after a third novel that I personally consider a bit slow and talky. This one is an improvement on all …
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