I've said before that Stephen Donaldson is my favourite author. Sometimes, though, I confess that it's hard to remember why.Certainly, no-one is likely to ever recommend he be shortlisted for elegiac or poetic language, or even much in the way of variation (his Scrabble champion love for obscure words notwithstanding), and the Thomas Covenant novels are the most problematic in this regard. Getting through an entire page can frequently be a chore; surviving a chapter could almost be considered as a new Olympic event. Every character talks in ponderous, wooden tones, their dialogue so distant from human standards that the rare instances of American idioms are hideously jarring.
And when they're not talking, the characters are embarking on marathon sessions of cyclic self-reflection, turning the same mental stones over again and again, searching for solutions to insolvable problems.
Given all of that, then, it might seem strange that I even like Donaldson, much less consider him my favourite author. Well, in truth I'd say Covenant novels to be far and away his weakest work (both The Gap Cycle and Mordant's Need are both massively superior and truly exceptional), but even within them, I find something unique.
The Covenant books are each two things simultaneously. They're a description of a simply-sketched but well-considered fantasy world, one in which (unusually) the various peoples are differentiated from each other and ourselves not by pointy ears or blue skin but by the logical ramifications of their fundamental natures (the Haruchai in particular are one of my favourite fantasy races, despite looking and (nearly) sounding entirely human). More than that, though, they're something I've never seen anywhere else: emotional and rational detective novels. When Covenant or Linden work through their endless cycles of their existential crises, they're sifting through evidence. Attempting to find a path through a metaphorical mine field of paradoxes and disaster. Where most fantasy novels (in a vague sense) concern themselves with attempting to gain power, to get to a place where power can be used, or to remove power from the opposition, the Covenant Chronicles deal with situations in which power is in ample supply, and the struggle is in resisting the temptation to use it.
This, as I've pointed out many times, is quite a Wagnerian idea (small wonder Donaldson adapted The Ring Cycle into The Gap Series), and one I find immensely attractive.
The main problem with Against All Things Ending, the third novel in the tetralogy which will apparently end Covenant's story (resulting in three series and ten novels overall) is that it demonstrates that whilst these ideas can be fascinating as part of a larger story, they make for a uniquely frustrating filler novel.
There is quite simply not enough here to justify almost eight hundred pages. Ironically, I can't express just how profound the problem is without referencing one of the book's few major spoilers, so from here on in, nothing is safe.
