This Day All Gods Die: The Gap Into Ruin

You won't be buying this book, most likely, unless you've read the previous books in the series. If you haven't read the first books, read them! This is a great sci-fi series, featuring Donaldson's unique writing style and many strong characters. Anyone who enjoys fiction will enjoy this series.

This volume caps Donaldson's amazing Gap series. Those familiar with my reviews know that I don't lightly describe something as amazing. This is easily the most captivating SF series I have read in years, and unlike many series, it does not peter out or become predictable in later volumes.As you would expect of Donaldson's work, the real story is about the characters and their flaws and struggles -- he takes us deep into the well developed personalities of each major character, and how they persevere, or fail, despite their weaknesses.The series is pretty cleanly wrapped up in this volume, with few unanswered questions left at the end. If you've come this far in the series, of course you want to read this one too!

When I started reading the series, I was wary. Various people warned me of the brutality I would encounter. Thus, I read out of curiosity. After finishing book one, I decided that I had encountered neither the brutality nor the intricate characters or plot I had expected.However, I plowed forward. As the books went on, the characters gained depth, the plot twisted and grew more precarious, and I started taking sides.By the time I reached this final book of the saga, I was fully hooked, and rightly so. Donaldson ties it all together in the final volume. The intrigue unwinds with a domino effect and plays itself out quite nicely. Further, although many plots and subplots reach fruition, he does not insult the reader by leaving us with a happy world with carefree characters. This is as it should be - a series about a period in time, not a novel claiming to encompass all relavant times.I would recommend that readers not stop with the first book of the series, or even the second. Keep reading and you will understand the politics at work, which makes this final book all the more satisfying.

I feel this series is truly one of the best I have ever read, and the most overlooked by serious science fiction readers. Those who were looking for the Thomas Covenant series would not find it here. I admit, I thought The Real Story was not as strong of a start as it could have been, but in my opinion each book was better than the last, and this climax is truly one of the most incredible books I have read. The characters have depth and expression provided by the contrasts between their flaws and their strengths -- and the complexity of the tale weaving through the books pulls together well. The beauty of the tale is summed up by Warden Dios -- he did not choose Morn because of who she was, but merely because she was conveniently at hand -- but she and the rest of everyone he put his trust in transcended him.I have read this series many, many times over and am always awed when I come to this last book.

Stephen Donaldson infuses his fiction with the ideas and import of great art and philosophy of the past. The Thomas Covenant Chronicles is largely a Biblical allegory. The Mordant's Need series has its roots in King Lear. The Gap series, as Donaldson points out in the afterword to the first of five volumes, is a functional allegory to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (the Ring of the Nibelungen), a cycle of four operas based in the Norse and Teutonic mythologies that also gave considerable inspiration to Tolkien. Though the novels function more than adequately without a working knowledge of the Ring, the power and intricacy of Donaldson's plotting and structure is all the more powerful when the allegory is understood. Some of the reviews below confuse me in the points they find to be unpleasant -- predictability, etc. There seems to be a general consternation in the fact that "the good guys win." Yet, as far as I can remember, they do so in Tolkien, earlier Donaldson, Brooks, Eddings, and every other fantasy series, science fiction movie and "genre" entertainment that I've ever run across. What needs to be remembered here is Donaldson's ability to structure and create is absolutely virtuosic. The first novel was originally conceived as a stand-alone short story and it remains the weakest of the five. It is unbearably brutal, harsh, and a character study, as his afterwords points out, in changing the roles of victim, persecutor and rescuer among the three characters. In its closed goal, it's still hard to read, but nonetheless succeeds in changing Morn Hyland from victim to rescuer, Angus Thermopylae from persecutor to victim, and Nick Succorso from rescuer to persecutor within a particualr context. Donaldson's idea of expansion into the Ring allegory took the story on different dimensions, and it is fascinating to see his science-fiction translations of the mythical story of the Ring. Granted, sometimes Donaldson became a little playful with what he was doing. In Wagner, the two giants Fasolt and Fafner fight over the ability to control the Ring; Fafner kills Fasolt, flees to the woods with the treasure and turns into a dragon. Donaldson's representative character is known as the Dragon and named Holt Fasner -- Fasner beign a combination of Fasolt and Fafner. It's not so much an in-joke as it is a "bonus" to the reader who knows the source material. However, the series as a whole is a brilliant, brilliant story. It serves the Ring by reiterating that its themes really are universal, and have meaning well beyond any Wagner intended. It serves science fiction by being an intense character drama, wedged in among political and xenophobic tensions. Too much science fiction is motivated off laser battles and implausible technologies. Donaldson's writing in the same manner that Wagner did. The reality of the presentation is separate from the message and the drama. Gods and myths were no more real to Wagner's audience than s