Lord Foul's Bane is a fantasy novel by American writer Stephen R. Donaldson, the first book of the first trilogy of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series. It is followed by The Illearth War.
Picked this up again after having read it as a teen. Unfortunately it did not hold up. The story and world building is fine, but the constant internal dialogue the protagonist has going round and round and round makes the read a slog at best.
I hated this book and, for the record, I didn't finish it.
I get that Covenant is not likable on purpose. The whole idea that attracted me to this book is that Covenant doesn't "opt in" when the call to adventure is thrust upon him and for about 50 pages it was nice to have a protagonist that was such a miserable prick.
But then Covenant rapes Lena. At that point I took a long hard look at the book, read another 100 pages or so to see what consequences fell out, and then decided to cut my losses.
I can appreciate that Donaldson was trying to push the boundaries of fantasy by defying a ton of hero tropes, but - at least for me - he didn't have the skill to actually make a good story out of it. Covenant is inexplicably transported to The Land, a name which …
I hated this book and, for the record, I didn't finish it.
I get that Covenant is not likable on purpose. The whole idea that attracted me to this book is that Covenant doesn't "opt in" when the call to adventure is thrust upon him and for about 50 pages it was nice to have a protagonist that was such a miserable prick.
But then Covenant rapes Lena. At that point I took a long hard look at the book, read another 100 pages or so to see what consequences fell out, and then decided to cut my losses.
I can appreciate that Donaldson was trying to push the boundaries of fantasy by defying a ton of hero tropes, but - at least for me - he didn't have the skill to actually make a good story out of it. Covenant is inexplicably transported to The Land, a name which reflects the utterly boilerplate nature of this fantasy world, and is helped by a bunch of people that read like cardboard cutouts to defeat Lord Foul, another name which might as well be Lord Badguy Placeholder.
The prose is just as devoid of interest as the setting and characters. Donaldson's style is dusty and most of the time not very evocative. When the characters of the Land speak it's in this stilted fantasy accent that made my brain flatline. If Covenant wasn't such an ass this book would have just been unimaginative and boring instead of torturously frustrating.
I gave this book 200 pages to pique my interest and after that long there was just nothing that could provoke me to turn another page except picking up a totally different book.
Mega depressing book, I wonder if there is a fantasy series that is as dark as this? Covenant has gotta be one of the worst "heroes" ever created. The book is well written and the fantasy side of the story is as good as many other fantasy books I've read, but the feeling I got at the end made me not want to read the next book, especially as a mate of mine said it doesn't get any better. Maybe this year I shall have a go at book 2 and be traumatised all over again.
The purest expression of the agon of living on after trauma.
I read this when I was younger and I think I never read the first book of the series. It confused me back then and even now it is a bit confusing, sometimes rambling. I have rarely read a book with a protagonist as unlikable as Thomas Covenant and yet I started reading the second book yesterday ... so somehow it does have that "something".
Interestingly the scene where the Quest watches Drool's army march from Mount Thunder read as an exact copy of the one where Frodo watches the armies emerge from Mordor in the movie. Now I really need to go back and read that part of LotR to check if not only the image - which is younger than this series - was copied but if maybe the whole scene was ripped in so much detail or if it is just an accident.
Of course in genre …
I read this when I was younger and I think I never read the first book of the series. It confused me back then and even now it is a bit confusing, sometimes rambling. I have rarely read a book with a protagonist as unlikable as Thomas Covenant and yet I started reading the second book yesterday ... so somehow it does have that "something".
Interestingly the scene where the Quest watches Drool's army march from Mount Thunder read as an exact copy of the one where Frodo watches the armies emerge from Mordor in the movie. Now I really need to go back and read that part of LotR to check if not only the image - which is younger than this series - was copied but if maybe the whole scene was ripped in so much detail or if it is just an accident.
Of course in genre books you'll always have a certain amount of similarities ... I don't mind so much. Sometimes it's fun finding out what inspired an author by being able to link a scene to another book.
