The Illearth War: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book Two

The Covenant Chronicles is probably one of the BEST series out there .. How is it that no one has bothered to review this classic? There are very few parts that actually lag, but I guarantee you'll be happy if you just keep reading! This series is for the grown-ups. Just as Tolkien, Terry Brooks and Gordon R. Dickson.

I read the first Thomas Covenant Book at a very dark time in my life. I have just finished the second book some years later. I felt just like Covenant who returns to The Land some forty years later and has to catch up on what's going on. I was glad to see that he hadn't lost his sense of realism and careful evaluation. I know that many call this pessimism, but I call it keeping it real. My wife and I are both big fans of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia. This series is neither of those. In those stories the hero or heroes know what they are there for and the task at hand, but not so with Covenant. In fact, there are many points in the book where Covenant doesn't know nor cares about what is expected of him. He only seems to act out of self-preservation and frustration. Many are the times when the reader is yelling at the book so as to make Covenant, at the very least, attempt to help. By the way, my wife cannot stand such dark and brewding novels. The Last Battle (Narnia) is dark enough for her. The battle scenes are great and you are totally swept along, but it is a long and winding road that takes you there. In short, Thomas Covenant doesn't know what he's doing, but he is still in there trying. However, the toughest enemy seems to be himself.

It's obvious that Donaldson was cutting his teeth, so to speak, while writing Lord Foul's Bane. To be certain, that book had periods of brilliance, such as the occurrences in Andelain, but all in all it was probably the weakest book in the series. (That doesn't mean it isn't good - just that the rest of the books are incredible.) In The Illearth War Covenant is called back to the Land for a second time, and his image of a reluctant hero is burnished in our mind even more than it was in the previous book, for while he was being summoned he was also on the phone with his ex-wife, Joan. The woman who left him for fear of his leprosy, the woman with whom he was still in love, the woman who was telling him, right then, that she missed and needed him. So he protests his summoning vehemently, but to no avail. As the new High Lord Elena indicates, they have no knowledge of how to send a person back once a summons is complete. The Council of Lords has some new faces on it. It's been forty years since Covenant has been to the Land, and seven years (seven "Land" years) remain until the fulfillment of Foul's ominous prophecy from Lord Foul's Bane. The Lords are desperate. While they regained the Staff of Law and found High Lord Kevin's Second Ward at the end of Lord Foul's Bane, they have learned very little. The language, they find, is difficult to penetrate, and they find themselves unequal to the task of mastering the lore. Due to their sense of overwhelming failure and inadequacy, and other baleful events, they make the decision to summon Covenant. There is another addition to Revelstone: Hile Troy. He is a character from the "real world", someone who has read (or had read to him) Covenant's best selling novel. This is, perhaps, Donaldson's way of telling us that Covenant's experiences most definitely is not a dream (which Covenant is still convincing himself of). He's also blind, and unlike Covenant - who maintains fierce unbelief - Troy believes in the Land with a passion that precludes life. Many readers interpret Troy's character as what Covenant *should* be. If Hile Troy had a white gold ring, his passion, his love for the land (for it allowed him to see again - and besides, everyone, even the readers, fall in love with the Land) would lead him directly to a confrontation to Foul. Unfortunately, not understanding the dilemmas of power, he would likely experience a resounding defeat. What people don't understand about Covenant, and Troy's character is supposed to help them understand this, is that Covenant's stubborn unbelief exists for a reason. In Lord Foul's Bane, Donaldson meticulously discussed the rigors of leprosy, what it meant to be a leper, what it meant to *survive* as a leper. And though bitter and angry at life and everything around him - or perhaps because of his bitterness - Covenant made the decision to live. And living entails never, ever letting your guard drop for one second. Because if you do, you can bump into something, not

4 1/2 stars.Having reread Lord of the Rings in anticipation of the films last year, I recently also paid a visit to another fantasy series that I enjoyed while in middle school: Thomas Covenant. Nearly 20 years later, I appreciate the books more. The themes are very adult and while I enjoyed the books as a child because Donaldson creates a great fantasy-world that will interest and draw in readers of all ages, I am better able to understand what Donaldson was trying to accomplish now that I'm older. The Illearth War is probably the best book in the series. The quick maturation of Donaldson's writing style makes this book a much better read than the first installment. In fact, after rereading the series, I think that Donaldson knew that his second book was put together better than the first to the extent that he made it so that reading the first book really isn't necessary. There is enough back-story revealed in the first few chapters so that any reader could grasp most of what happened in the first book, as it happened, without having to read it. In my review of the Lord Foul's bane, I was preoccupied with detailing the many similarities between the Thomas Covenant series and Lord of the Rings and, thankfully, there is much less of this in Illearth War. Obviously, the basic principles of the story are retained, but the only new thing added that seems LOTR-related is that this second novel in the TC series is a war novel (with a side story of two major characters being led by a strange guide in search of something), and thus the general structure of Illearth War is copied from The Two Towers. But Dondaldson is more his own voice here, and that is a welcome change. The psyche and personality of Thomas Covenant is fleshed out much more fully here than in LFB; ironically, since Covenant has a far less prominent role as a character here than in LFB. This is accomplished by two foils for Covenant: the Lord Morham (a good man by which we can see how Covenant may have turned out had he been born to the land), and the character of Hile Troy, a blind man who is from Covenant's world (a man who is in nearly every sense the opposite of Covenant). Aside from some highly unlikely military tactics on the part of Lord Foul's army (I have no idea why an immense invading army would ever chase the much smaller defending army across a continent to do battle on the smaller army's terms; the larger invaders could simply set about their business of destruction and occupation and force the defenders to come to them), there is nothing about this novel that bothered me the way some small things about the predecessor did. This is a richly detailed, yet taut and economical fantasy novel -- certainly one of the best that I've ever read. Even Lord Foul is made more menacing by eliminating him from the dialogue: the reader gets to see the effects of Foul's evil rather than experience it from his mouth [a mistake Donaldson made in the first novel, IMO, was to give

This story continues immediately after Thomas Covenant's return to the "real" world after the events of Lord Foul's Bane. His guilt and self-torment due to his shortcomings (both percieved and real) and crimes committed during his adventures in the Land is only magnified when, after a couple of weeks, he is again inexplicably returned to the Land, where forty years have passed. Once again, the Land is facing a crisis in the war against Lord Foul, and the Lords have summoned Covenant to the Land to try to convince him to use his wild magic to aid them. Covenant is, again tormented by the fact that he believes the Land to be nothing more than an escape from reality for his wounded and grieving mind and spirit. He cannot accept that the Land may be real and deserving of his aid. He knows that he will eventually have to "wake up", and if he gives in to his dreams, his existence defined by loneliness and leprosy will be unbearable.Stephen R. Donaldson, once again, does a magnificent job of creating a lush, wondrous world peopled with unforgettable characters. The most interesting character in the book is Hile Troy, a blind man from the "real" world who, through his uncanny tactical skill and leadership, has risen to command the Warward, the army of the Lords. Unlike Covenant, Troy has accepted the Land as reality and is striving to aid the Land to the best of his ability. Troy considers Covenant a coward because of his reluctance to aid the Land. But Troy can no more comprehend Covenant's inner conflict any more than the native people of the Land. There are many other well-drawn characters introduced here, including High Lord Elena, Lords Hyrim and Verement, and the inscrutable and mysterious Amok. Also, more flesh is added to the characters of Bannor of the Bloodguard and Lord Mhoram, returning characters from the first book.It's tough to talk about the plot too much without risking revealing too much to those who have not read it. But this book is a much more complex plot than the fairly straightforward quest in the first book. The different subplots of the military conflict between the Warward and Lord Foul's army and High Lord Elena's (and Covenant's) quest to gain new power to fight Lord Foul are both compelling and well-written. But, perhaps the most gripping part of the book are the two chapters dealing with the efforts of the Lords to give aid to the Giants, who have mysteriously dropped out of sight just when the Land needs their aid the most.This book is both a continuation of and an improvement on the story told in Lord Foul's Bane. It's just as full of obscure words, though, which does make the reading of it a little difficult. Donaldson is truly a master of epic fantasy.

This is Donaldson's best book -- the best of the Covenant series and better than any other fantasy written in the past 20 years. It's that good. Continuing the story from Lord Foul's Bane, the reluctant anti-hero leper Thomas Covenant returns to the mysterious Land, where he is again called upon to save it even as he must deny its existence to try and maintain his sanity. Of course, there is the added twist that he doesn't even know how to use the awesome power of the white gold wedding band at his wrist, even if he wanted to. Meanwhile, in the "real world," life is getting even tougher for Covenant. The forces of evil are at work in both worlds, with a titanic war splitting the Land and threatening to destroy it utterly. It's rare these days for a fantasy to be truly fantastic. Too often, hacks like David Eddings or Terry Brooks simply recycle plots from their earlier days and write hack and slash 'em pulp novels that are read one day and mind-flushed the next.Donaldson's novels sear themselves into your brain, so that you remember them for years, decades after you last read them. The characters -- Foamfollower, the Bloodguard, Lord Mhoram, Lena -- each is deep and rich with emotional scars and a quiet strength and courage. Covenant in comparison can't help but appear bad, yet somehow, through his travels in the Land, he slowly, slowly manages to find his humanity again that had been stripped away by leprosy and VSE. If you haven't read the Covenant series, do yourself a favor and go read Lord Foul's Bane, then the Illearth War and the rest of the books. They are the treasure of modern fantasy.