The Science Fiction Novel - Stephen R. Donaldson

A beautiful sunny day today. It's that time of year when the great sports overlap begins. This morning I watched some English Premier League footie, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts curling semi-final and the Blue Jays first spring training game (The beat the Yankees 2-1) 😎

The Science Fiction Novel - Stephen R. Donaldson

Stephen R. Donaldson

Stephen Reeder Donaldson  is an American Fantasy / Sci-Fi author born in Cleveland (The Cleve) Ohio in 1947. He is best known for his ten-volume!!! (TEN! There were only six when I read it!!) fantasy series featuring Thomas Covenant. Donaldson spent part of his youth in India with his father, who was a missionary, working with lepers. This obviously influenced his character of Thomas Covenant.

Like many of his peers, Donaldson was influenced by the works of J.R.R.R. Tolkien but he was also influenced by others such as C.S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, Mervyn Peake and also the opera of Wagner.

Thomas Covenant

1. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I was first introduced to Stephen R. Donaldson's work with the six-volume series about leper Thomas Covenant. Covenant is an angry, cynical leper who finds himself transported to 'the Land' where he finds himself in battle with Lord Foul's Bane. It was a series that was both fascinating (such a great world Donaldson created) and frustrating (Thomas Covenant is very much an anti-hero who doesn't believe he actually in the Land, doesn't believe he is the savior and his actions, or maybe more correctly his lack of action, result in the death of many loyal followers). I read the first six books in the early 2000's and enjoyed it very much.

Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

I have since discovered (like right now as I was checking out the series) that there is a 3rd series, a tetralogy, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I guess I'll have to find them. The complete series is as below -

a. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
- Lord Foul's Bane (1977)
- The Illearth War (1978)
- The Power that Preserves (1979)

b. The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- The Wounded Land (1980)
- The One Tree (1982)
- White Gold Wielder (1983)

c. The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- The Runes of Earth (2004)
- Fatal Revenant (2007)
- Against All Things Ending (2010)
- The Last Dark (2013)

After reading the first six books of the series I discovered a two book series; Mordant's Need, that I actually preferred, if I recall correctly.

2. Mordant's Need (2 books)

a. The Mirror of her Dreams (1986).











"The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life—until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.


Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead." (4 stars)

b. A Man Rides Through (1987).












"'Someone will stop you,” she said as if she were accustomed to defiance. “If Geraden doesn’t do it, I will. You’re going to be stopped.”

“Geraden?” spat Gilbur. “You? How are you going to stop me?”

How?

Like this.

She didn’t need to say it aloud. He was still bearing down on her with his bloody hands when he seemed to run into a wall. Surprise wiped the violence from his face: his eyes sprang wide as he saw what was happening to the mirror behind her.

She didn’t look. The last time she had done this, she had done it entirely by accident, without knowing what she was doing; she didn’t try to coerce it now. In any case, at the moment she didn’t care whether she lived or died. She only cared about escape.

still astonished, but recovering his wits, Master Gilbur reached for her.

Gently, Terisa closed her eyes and drifted backward into the dark.'

Terisa Morgan desperately needed to escape. Gilbur was trying to kill her, Castellan Lebbick wanted to torture her, and she needed to find Geraden. Orison was being attacked by the Alend army poised at the gates…Eremis, the traitor, was working with Gilbur in league with the hated Cadwals and the Arch-Imager Vagel…King Joyse’s actions could not be explained.

Everything that Geraden loved was about to be destroyed—unless the two of them could find a way to prevent it by using the talent for mirrors and Imagery that Terisa now knew they both possessed…a talent that made them extremely powerful and extremely dangerous to Eremis. And Terisa knew that Eremis would use all the evil means at his disposal to insure the success of his master plan, which meant that the kingdom would be lost and she and Geraden would surely die."

Stephen R. Donaldson was not limited to these two series as her wrote a number of other novels / series. The complete listing of his works are available at this link.