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by Jonathan Kiek (Illustrator: David Cheepen)
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by Bil Keane
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by W. R. Philbrick
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by John Wesley Howard
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Lord Foul's Bane (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book One)
by Stephen R. Donaldson
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Del Rey (1985-02-12)
ISBN: 0345326032
EAN: 9780345326034
Mass Market Paperback
Release Date: 1985-02-12
SKU: mon0000046397
Condition: Very Good
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Customer Reviews
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The Leper Results a Reluctant Champion.
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-11-16
Usually when people review series or sagas waits to read all the tomes before writing the individual review.
I choose to review each installment as soon as I finish reading it as not to be influenced by the overall picture in detriment of the individual volume.
The first trilogy of "Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever" was Donaldson's first opus and launched him to immediate consideration of public & critics.
Donaldson's proposal is quite risky.
The main character is unable to compromise with the fantastic universe that deploys before him. The reader will certainly not identify with Covenant's sour & bitter personality.
Nevertheless a powerful story is constructed over this implausible pillar!
Second risky item: a baroque language is used by the author. As I am a foreigner to English language, it doesn't bother me to take a look into dictionary when reading any book. In order to understand this trilogy, the difference with other readings is just the greater frequency I needed to look up words.
The tale is as follows: Thomas is a writer whose first novel is a best seller. When he is enjoying his success and trying to write his second book, he is found to be a leper.
He looses two fingers of his right hand. His wife & son run away from him. He spent a semester at a leprosarium and returns to his home, just to find what a leper's life is: no one wants to relate to him, he is an outcast, forced to solitude.
He turns into an angry & resentful person.
Suddenly after a car accident he awakes in a different universe: The Land.
First he faces absolute evil incarnated in Lord Foul who releases him with a message for the Lords of the Land.
Then he encounters a young & beautiful girl that guide his first steps in the Land and thinks he may be the reincarnation of Berek Halfhand the greatest hero of the Land.
Thomas refuses to accept this universe as "real"; he thinks it is just a figment of his imagination; a defensive delusion to evade his painful reality.
He recovers his lost sensitivity in his hands and extremities. He is so charged of unmanageable energy that he commits his awful "original sin": he rapes the lovely Lena. This sin will torture & shame Covenant all thru the story.
Atiran, Lena's mother unaware of his wrongdoing leads him in search of the distant Revelstone, the Home of the Council of Lords. When Atiran finds out Thomas' felony, another Land's characteristic come to the fore: the Oath of Peace, creating a well of tension within her.
Stage by stage the Land and its dwellers will be presented to Covenant (and the reader) growing in complexity and interest.
Finally the Lords receive the message and launch the final Quest that closes this volume.
It is great book that may be enjoyed by fantasy fans and general public as well!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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Deep, dark, well-crafted fantasy
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-07-06
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I've read this book, and this series, twice, with a span of twenty-some years in between. When I first read it, I liked the characters, images, and story, but the language seemed deliberately over-complicated and intellectual. Now, after re-reading it, I think that I just wasn't ready for it the first time.
Thomas Covenant is a successful writer working on a sequel to his best-seller. He has a young, beautiful, loving wife, and a little child. He lives in the country in a home he sees as his haven. He has it made. And then, he is diagnosed with leprosy. His wife leaves him because she fears he will contaminate their child. He spends months in and out of hospitals. He is shunned by his neighbors. Thomas Covenant is outcast, and deeply depressed. He withdraws into himself and builds a wall around him as thick as he any castle or fortress.
Suddenly, he is in an entirely different world. There is no leprosy, he recognizes no one, he recognizes nothing of where he is, and everyone identifies him as the reincarnation of an ancient, semi-mythical hero, who was foretold to return to The Land to heal it with his magic. Covenant doesn't believe any of this, and assumes, despite the apparent impossible reality of everything around him, that he is in a delirium-induced delusion. He is named Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
What does he do? Does he wait to awaken, and thus end the delusion? He tries that, but the "reality" of his new surroundings continues. Does he believe what everyone in this new and strange world tells him? He refuses that option, as he sees it as a surrender to insanity. Thomas Covenant reaches a compromise with himself: he accepts that he is living in an illusory world induced by a coma, but accepts that the best way to pass the time is to cooperate in the illusion. The seeming reality of his new world keeps enticing him into accepting its reality and surrendering his Unbelief, but he is obstinate.
Oh, by the way, through all of this, Thomas Covenant remains cynical, depressed, sarcastic, irritable, rude, and generally a pain in the . . . neck. An interesting hero, indeed.
Thus is launched "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever". The series was a trilogy, and then a second trilogy was added. The characters are deep and well-developed, the writing is complicated, intelligent, and extremely sophisticated (the exact opposite of Hemingway's stunning simplicity and not far off from Faulkner's esoteric and obtuse complexity), and the story is riveting. This is NOT a fun, easy read. This IS deep, major fantasy on an epic scale. It might be hard to get into, but it will be hard to put down once you do get into it.
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good different fantasy
Rating  (4)
Date: 2003-06-03
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a good break from the typical dragon-world fantasy genre. Donaldson uses a complex anti-hero as the eyeglass to an enthralling fantasy world that's quite different from the typical fantasy worlds. Good series, but the main character does whine quite a bit.
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The Best
Rating  (1)
Date: 2003-01-31
0 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is the first book in one of the dam best stories you will ever read. I only wish I had never read it so I could read it like I did the first time.
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