Search A Light In The Darkness

Friday 12 November 2010

Book Review: "Fatal Revenant"

Fatal Revenant by Stephen Donaldson.
Personal Rating: 8/10 - well structured and enjoyable. Classic Science fantasy continuing in the vein of what has gone before in the 1st & 2nd Chronicles.
Review: The second volume (after The Runes of the Earth, 2004) of the final Thomas Covenant tetralogy takes place entirely in the Land, to which Linden Avery has gone in search of her missing autistic son, whom she finds, completely cured and even outspokenly brash, in the company of a hale and hearty Thomas Covenant. The hitch, however, is that they now must find a hidden store of Earthpower, after which Linden may have to choose between using it to return herself and her companions to Earth, health, and happiness or to save the Land from its enemies. Donaldson maintains his propensity for forcing his female characters to jump through flaming hoops, but here the women are more modest, at least physically. Linden's dilemmas and choices are less athletic and more of the ethical variety. Should saving her son, now of sound though rebellious mind, override her duties to the still direly periled Land? The time it takes her, with some counsel from Thomas, to reach a compromise solution and to attempt to carry it out involves much pace-slowing angst, even if it further develops Linden's status as the new saga's real protagonist. The ending is the kind of cliff-hanger that should have readers returning to see how it and the remaining adventures play out (Amazon)