The Wounded Land by Stephen Donaldson
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The Wounded Land by Stephen Donaldson begins The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant as Thomas Covenant once more returns to the Land.
It has been four thousand years since Thomas Covenant fought and threw down Lord Foul. The Land was saved but the time that has elapsed since has been unkind and human sacrifice and corruption is a plague on the Land.
It is into this nightmare dreamscape that Thomas Covenant once again reluctantly returns to the Land and he must one again battle Lord Foul armed only with his white gold wedding ring.
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were dark, the Second Chronicles take us even further into despair. The Land, once full of beauty and health is now a land full of pestilence and evil. Everything that was once good about the Land has gone and every memory Covenant has is now tainted by corruption.
The Wounded Land improves upon the first three books by giving is more mature characters and also by making Covenant far easier to empathize with. We follow him every inch of the way as he and his companions suffer under the dreadful Sunbane as we feel the pain he feels when he sees what has become of Revelstone.
Reading this piece of work should not be entered lightly as you will only get something out of it if you put a lot of yourself in. You will not be uplifted as despair and desperation are the overriding emotions, Covenant does after all have leprosy and this is not a man that you would expect to be full of the joys of life.
Sophisticated reading for an adult audience, an enthralling story set against an epic fantasy background.
The Wounded Land (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) (Amazon.co.uk)
Author: Stephen Donaldson
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 512
Publication date: 1980-10
Publisher: Voyager
RRP: £6.99
Lowest new price:
Lowest used price: £0.01
The Wounded Land (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) (Amazon.com)
Author: Stephen Donaldson
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 512
Publication date: 1980-10
Publisher: Voyager
RRP: $14.45
Lowest new price:
Lowest used price: $0.01
In this story Thomas Covenant returns unwillingly to the Land ravaged by 4000 years of Lord Foul's pestilence. Under the evil Sunbane, the people of the Land submit to cruel sacrifices, the rulers of Revelstone are corrupt and the countryside is laid waste.
Product Description
Brien from Wichita, KS
"The Thomas Covenant books should be rated a lot higher than how this website is rating them. These books are literary masterpieces and should be treated as such. I do agree, however, that these are not for the faint of heart. That is what makes them so great! You would be hard pressed to find an anti hero like Thomas Covenant in any other Fantasy works.Great series, if your an adult who can get into some dark fantasy, give these a shot!"
Peter Healy from Huddersfield, England
"I agree with Brien. The placing of this book as the highest of the covenant series at number 58 is laughable. I read and lived through Tolkien's works at the precocious age of 13. I felt saddened that 'the journey' had ended and looked around for something comparable to fill the gap. Virtually all the books I tried were of the type rated so highly on this site - embellished swords and sorcery pulp - written and read by shy introverts of limited literary ability and naïve ignorance of basic human characterisation depth. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant broke through those limited 'fantasy' conventions with such invention and audacity that I suspect the average fantasy reader was left far behind. Perhaps a rating of 58 from such reviewers is a back-handed compliment of the highest order. If you've not read the works of Homer, Shakespeare's tragedies & anything by a woman called Bronte. then of what value is your opinion?"
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