Thomas Covenant; Or, The Great Filter
BE TRUE
I recently finished The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson and I can’t help myself. I have to talk about it. First, I just want to say, I was fucking blown away. I’ve already started The Second Chronicles so no comment on those or, obviously, the last four books (there’s ten in total) because I haven’t gotten that far yet, but the first trilogy should be REQUIRED READING for any fantasy fans that truly give a shit about the genre. I actually got a little mad that I hadn’t had the fortune of stumbling into them sooner—I’ve been reading fantasy for 25+ years and only just read these?! It made me wonder why they’re barely talked about now, despite accolades when they were published—in fact, most people who have messaged me as I’ve posted about it, on Notes or Instagram, are older fans who read them in the 80s. Unlike, say, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, which is also a huge filter, there lacks the large community of analysis, debate, cult fandom surrounding the Thomas Covenant books.
Which is really unfortunate, for the same reason I constantly rave about Jack Vance—few others of the millenial-and-younger crowds do, and he deserves to be spoken about more. Yet, these books fall under your favourite author’s favourites. Just like Vance’s books—there would be no BotNS without Vance, there would be no Malazan without Donaldson.
Because I went into these relatively blind (someone, and I forget who, recommended them to me, knowing I’d dig it “if [I] like anti-heroes.” I did indeed dig it. Rarely does a book recommendation hit the mark so fucking hard. I’m just so sorry I forget who told me to read them. If that was you, dear reader, thanks a bunch) and experienced how unique the books are—especially considering they were written during peak 70s Tolkien copycatism—I was shocked, shocked I say, as I looked up reviews after I completed the three novels, to find that Modern Audiences(tm)
MISS THE FUCKING POINT, YET AGAIN.
And I’m not just talking about the stereotypical “theatre kids that ruin everything” crowd. I see complaints from the woke and the moral crusader chuds. Left and right. Donaldson has been confounding people and making them super mad since 1977—a career achievement I envy a great deal. 1
Do you ever read reviews of your favourite books and think to yourself “mass literacy was a mistake?” This was me, facepalming my way through the sea of people who clearly can’t actually read.2 And why do I even bother looking up reviews? To keep myself abreast of the zeitgeist or something, I don’t know; but here’s something I talk about all the time, as much as a reminder to myself as an author but also as a reader who is a fucking freak apparently—find your next read via 1-star reviews. I promise, you will find a gem. (More on this later, also.)
These books are such a fucking FILTER it’s hilarious… But sad, because it speaks to a deeper problem with the fantasy fandom as a whole. (Harlan Ellison? Is that you? My spirit animal, scowling up at me?)
And, sadly, it also reflects on why so much in modern fantasy, both trad- and self-pubbed novels, misses the fucking mark. Falls flat. Feels empty. Fantasy has become trope-addled.3 In order to write the cool shit that stands the test of time you have to make people care about it, and frankly I had sworn off epic fantasy as a whole a long time ago because of this. It’s become the mental equivalent of high-fructose corn syrup, as it incestuously circles the drain, current writers and readers not reading anything but other current fantasy (except maybe Tolkein, and even LOTR has become books people lie about having read) and devolving the genre into single-cell amoebic slop.
But fantasy is more than that. Fantasy is capable of saying so much, about the human condition or real-life problems, precisely because we are able to frame issues in fantastical devices. Why do you think all the great myths through human history are, essentially, shelvable under Fantasy? (See footnote 8)
Before I elaborate further, allow me to speak of the books themselves, and gush.
(And, reminder too, as much as I am emphasizing the filters and dumb takes, there are plenty of people who DO love the books and the others I mention (including my own!) THAT is why you should ALWAYS be true to your vision, don’t write for people who don’t, won’t, or can’t understand your work. If you do your job right, those people will be in the minority. And then we can laugh at them.)
Without further ado…
LEPER OUTCAST UNCLEAN!
And he who wields white wild magic gold is a paradox— for he is everything and nothing, hero and fool, potent, helpless— and with the one word of truth or treachery, he will save or damn the Earth because he is mad and sane, cold and passionate, lost and found.
As soon as I opened Lord Foul’s Bane I found myself reading with the same head-voice as when I read Vance, Wolfe, Patricia A. McKillip, Le Guin, Clark Ashton Smith, or even McCarthy, to go outside SFF—that is to say, Donaldson’s prose tickled a particular spot in my brain that hooked me immediately. His prose is the first of the Great Filters. Even when the books were first published people were saying things like “you gotta have a dictionary open as you read” (derogatory.)
Vocabulary expansion is a good thing, actually. Playing with language is fun. Seeing how others use language is fun, if you aren’t just reading to get to the fighting and/or fucking scenes.4 If you don’t want SFF to be looked down on and ghettoized, read outside the genre and work on your damn prose so whichever way your voice goes your prose can keep up. Minimalist, maximalist, whatever-ist, just please give a shit about it.
When I first read Lyonesse by Jack Vance when I was 13, I read it with a dictionary beside me. That series wasn’t my first foray into fantasy, but it was the first one that severely influenced my tastes.5
I read one review of Donaldson’s prose calling it “operatic” and “florid.” Do only British SFF authors get a pass? Seems every American SFF author that uses multisyllabic words gets accused of “purple prose” by people who have no fucking clue what purple prose actually is. (And I say this as a Canadian SFF author—we don’t really get a pass for anything, unless you’re Guy Gavriel Kay. The Canadian literary scene is not genre friendly but that’s a talk for another day.)
Donaldson does NOT write with purple prose. I will agree with operatic—in the past I’ve called Vance’s prose “like jazz” too—but Donaldson’s word choices are extremely deliberate. His descriptions are deliberate. I’m concerned over how much intentionality in his choices Mr. Donaldson probably tortured himself with. If a passage seems vague and/or contradictory, yeah, it is, that’s the point. (You’re going to see that phrase a lot from here on in.)
Get a dictionary out—hell, if you read the ebook, you’ve got a dictionary built in—and work through it. You will be rewarded.
Alright, back to the book. Thomas Covenant is introduced to us in Our World. He has leprosy, has had two of his fingers amputated, and because of his leprosy his community shuns him, fears him, is repulsed by him. His wife has divorced him and fled the state with their son. He is an extremely embittered man, after having spent months in a leprosarium being told there is no cure, this is your life now, don’t forget even a minor scrape can kill you, you’re impotent forever, and you might wind up deformed and stinking of rot like this poor bastard that thinks you should kill yourself before your disease progresses.
He collapses in the road, during an act of defiance to walk through town and be part of humanity, and wakes up in the Land, where he meets Lord Foul and Drool Rockworm6 and is given a message of doom to take to the Lords of Revelstone.
He then is found by a pretty, kind, generous young woman named Lena, who heals him of his leprosy with the power of the Land. And he really has a hard time handling the implications of this.
But Covenant continues on, out of spite (and here’s a masterful play on words and perception through the novel: Lord Foul the Despiser, the Gray Slayer, Fangthane the Render, operates through “Despite”—
It is possible for Despite to wear the guise of truth.
…Joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. The world has few stories glad in themselves, and we must have gay ears to defy Despite.
—and this same Lord Foul may or may not be working through Covenant as the story progresses, which is one of the main internal conflicts, bringing me to my next point about how these books filter people.
Sure, yes, it’s Epic Fantasy. But it is extremely Character Driven. Which almost makes me hesitate to call it Epic Fantasy at all, according to modern “epic fantasy” trends. If the Land is real, Covenant is experiencing some wild shit, and it fucks with his head. If the Land is not real, the events are all in his head: we are witnessing him going insane. Existential crises, woah!
He calls himself The Unbeliever for a reason. Partly to shirk the responsibility that if it is real, the bullshit he does Matters.
Ur-Lord, Unbeliever, Halfhand, White Gold Wielder… Filterer of the Unready
One of the biggest complaints I see about these books is due to Covenant himself.
“He spends the whole book [LFB] whining”
That’s the point. Read the next two.
“He treats everyone like shit.”
That’s the point.
“He’s self-absorbed.”
“I can't get over the [crime] he commits.”
Yes. That’s the point. Neither can he. He hates himself. He hates what he is. He pushes people away who care for him as a preservation response after what happened to his life in Our World due to his leprosy.
“He’s unlikable.”
“He’s unrelatable.”
Ah, the phrases that summon my repulsion toward the Modern Audience(tm). A well-written character doesn't have to be likable. They don't need to reflect you, or your values. They don’t need to be paragons of virtue. They have to Feel Real. That’s the only job of the author, when constructing characters. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? How else is fiction supposed to teach empathy? If all you want to read are characters you can “relate to” then your reading habits must be boring as fuck.
And also: Have you (these reviewers) never felt self-hate? Have you never wanted to die from guilt? Have you or a loved one never been so self-destructive it affects the lives of everyone around them and yet they continue because they hate themselves so much? Never felt unworthy of love? Never felt irredeemable? Lucky you.7
We are reading a manifestation of his physical and spiritual leprosy. He is not a Hero in the traditional Epic Fantasy sense—a progenitor of the anti-hero (alongside Elric of Melnibone) before that character type went mainstream.
And, I’m sorry, but many many authors get anti-heroes wrong. Donaldson does it impeccably, because he shows us the beauty of all things and the potential of Covenant through the side characters.
The people of the Land are Good. Pure people, kind and trusting, willing to help Covenant no matter how much of an asshole he is. Mhoram, Foamfollower, Bannor and an uncountable number of others are willing to forgive him, help him, or at least tolerate/accept him, for the sake of the Land. There are people he wronged so badly it echoes over generations, and yet they will still help those who help him to save and preserve what they love.
And many of them suffer.
Warmark Hile Troy
I’ve seen these books called grimdark, but they really aren’t. I’ve even seen “torture porn” used a couple times.
Yes. There is a lot of suffering. Sometimes you might have to close the book and take a deep breath.
They’re tragedies.
I felt more dread reading these books, pure dread, than I have from any horror novel. Especially in the second and third books, The Illearth War and The Power That Preserves. Holy fuck. (You really do have to read all three as if they’re one book, like LOTR or BotNS.)
Enter Hile Troy at the start of book 2, another person from Our World that is summoned to the Land. He’s blind—born without eyes blind—but the healing power of the Land gives him sight, the way that it impossibly cures Covenant’s leprosy.
But Troy believes unflinchingly in the realness of the place. He never wants to leave. A totally different mindset to Covenant.
But is it better?
Troy worked for the military, think-tank stuff, during Vietnam. He wants to help the Land, as Foul readies his army, via strategy, crunching numbers, and going out to the field himself. We have X amount of people able to fight. They have to march X amount of miles. Military theory, abstract stuff—he couldn’t fight on the ground in Our World due to his blindness, but dammit if he isn’t going to try his best using whatever skills he had learned as a government spook and his newfound magic sight.
I won’t spoil anything, but:
“Listen!” Covenant demanded. “I’m trying to warn you. If you could hear it. It’s going to happen to you, too. One of these days, you’re going to run out of people who’ll march their hearts out to make your ideas work. And then you’ll see that you put them through all that for nothing. Three-hundred-league marches—blocked valleys—your ideas. Paid for and wasted. All your fine tactics won’t be worth a rusty damn…”
Hile’s flaw is that he hasn’t experienced the guilt that Covenant has. He has too much faith in his personal cause. (A nod to Donaldson’s feelings about Vietnam.)
And he becomes desperate.
Only those who have sinned can be redeemed.
So let’s pivot. Why do people love these books so much that they were huge bestsellers in their day, won Donaldson a bunch of awards, etc?
Because at their core they are the most life-affirming fantasy novels I am personally aware of.
There is always hope. Just don't fucking kill yourself. Period.
THAT is why they are NOT grimdark. Despite the dread, the suffering, the tragedy, etc. They have Hope. Covenant is too fucking stubborn to die.
Stay alive.
And another point that reflects the Modern Audience is that, these days, people squirm at the thought that anyone who does wrong should ever be forgiven. Just look at cancel culture. I don’t believe I need to elaborate on this.
What is fantasy?
Put simply, fantasy is a form of fiction in which the internal crises or conflicts or processes of the characters are dramatized as if they were external individuals or events. Crudely stated, this means that in fantasy the characters meet themselves - or parts of themselves, their own needs/problems/exigencies - as actors on the stage of the story, and so the internal struggle to deal with those needs/problems/exigencies is played out as an external struggle in the action of the story.
A somewhat oversimplified way to make the same point is by comparing fantasy to realistic, mainstream fiction. In realistic fiction, the characters are expressions of their world, whereas in fantasy the world is an expressions of the characters. Even if you argue that realistic fiction is about the characters, and that the world they live in is just one tool to express them, it remains true that the details which make up their world come from a recognized body of reality – tables, chairs, jobs, stresses which we all acknowledge as being external and real, forceful on their own terms. In fantasy, however, the ultimate justification for all the external details arises from the characters themselves. The characters confer reality on their surroundings.
Think about this definition for a minute.
Want to know why fantasy as a genre fucking sucks now? It isn’t Tolkein worship, or lack thereof. It’s not because we don’t RETVRN to whatever era is your personal favourite. It isn’t because of D&D (OK maybe a little bit.)
IT’S BECAUSE EVERYONE IS MISSING THE FUCKING POINT OF FANTASY.
Modern fantasy has simply lost it’s capacity to reflect real humanity. You know, THE WHOLE POINT. Everyone (just look at agent wishlists…) wants to hit checkboxes and make trope maps. They’re afraid to go there, to offend, or to be sincere. Fuck off.
To be human is to struggle. And sometimes struggling makes us show our not-nice side. Sometimes it pushes us to virtue.
Never mind just fantasy fiction, I once saw a review for Evangelion where they say the show sucks because Shinji is a crybaby.
Wow! What a take. It’s almost like Shinji not wanting to get in the fucking robot is the point.
“Wuthering Heights is so romantic”
You didn't even read the book, did you? This is a “positive” one, but it’s still essentially a “mass literacy was a mistake” moment.
One of my favourite books of all time is The Sorrows of Young Werther. Here’s a couple 1-star reviews plucked directly from goodreads:
“One of the worst books I've ever had the misfortune to read. So much whining and self-pity!”
“Werther was an idiot that set himself up for failure. He just wanted something to feel bad about. He set himself up for misery. Rarely have I been so pissed off at a character…”
Holy fucking shit. LMAO. These people are too stupid to breathe. Also, notice it’s a similar complaint with Mr. Covenant? HMMMMM REALLY MAKES YOU THINK.
I choose an awful lot of books based on 1-star reviews, it’s a winning strat for finding great books.
“Flashman is a sexist, cowardly pig.”
Yes, that’s the point.
“Ignatious was repugnant and gross”
Yes, that’s why it’s funny.
“Nothing happens (except Severian admiring boobs)”
FILTERRRRRRRRED
And here’s some gems from my years of receiving feedback, for your pleasure (no, I did not change my books for these people. If you agree with my decision, great! That makes YOU guys my people.)
→“I had to quit half-way because Tanner was recklessly immature and promiscuous”
PULL ME UNDER free to read on substack!
→“Kylan is some random guy”
Yes he is!
→“Everyone in this book is an asshole”
→“Do they have to swear so much?”
That’s PRECISELY correct! And yes they do! They’re criminals!
THE HIGHWAYMAN KENNEDY THORNWICK Amazon Kobo
→“Their relationship is toxic… it’s all obsession and he’s unhinged.”
That’s the point!
THE GHOSTS OF TIEROS KOL Amazon Kobo
Peace!
Listen, you’re allowed to have personal taste and not like them. But this rant is for people who claim to be readers but when they’re confronted with something different or difficult they froth at the mouth. “I don't understand this and that makes me angry! No, I don’t want to think about why I’m having this reaction!”
I really wonder if it’s a fault of modern education or if there’s an army of people walking among us who simply weren’t born with the ability to comprehend what they read. Reading is more than just interpreting symbols. Think about the words you ingest. Please.
Yes, tropes are simply narrative tools, and that’s fine—every book, even these ones, use tropes. Even in literary fiction. Like I’ve said in previous rants, it’s all been done, but not by you. But, if your entire fucking novel can be simplified into tiny little twee phrases and squiggly-arrow trope map bullshit I’m sorry but I’m NOT INTERESTED in what you have to say.
Says the stupid bitch that previously wrote about bodice rippers lol. But I will repeat what I’ve said a million times, paraphrasing John Waters: you need to understand bad taste to cultivate good taste.
So here I am, writing books where I get told I use $10 words. Guess what? I won’t stop; I’m being true to my voice. So should you be. Your people will find you.
Another thing in my headcanon is that, because Covenant is an author himself, but hated his own books so much he burned them, Donaldson was a little cheeky with these names. Seriously, the Land? Lord Foul? Drool Rockworm? If the Land is a figment of Covenant’s imagination, maybe he burned his manuscripts for a reason LMAO
My sister went so far out of her way to make people hate her she fucking OD’d and died. Why did she feel so much hate for herself? Her whole life. Why did she feel she was unlovable? I’ll never know, now. But this is what Literature is for—so we can process these questions. My father's mental health, very similar self-destruction story to my sister, is why I wrote The Highwayman.
https://www.stephenrdonaldson.com/EpicFantasy.pdf ←read the whole thing.
All of my Fantasy works follow this definition. Read them. I dare you. And also this, from the same source as footnote 8:
In fantasy, the outside is an externalization, a metaphor, of the internal. And magic is perhaps the most fruitful metaphor available to this kind of fiction. In good fantasy, it is an expression of the inner imaginative energy of the characters - an expression of their charisma, their force of personality - an expression of the part of being human that transcends physiology. Writers of fantasy use the metaphor of magic as a means of discussing the ways in which human beings are greater than the sum of their parts.
If you’ve read my book The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick, you know that I believe this wholeheartedly.
Ah, I read the early Thomas Covenant books close to when they first came out, and this analysis took me back to that time. I think Donaldson is a very underappreciated writer.
When you finish with that series, I would recommend the Mordant's Need series (also epic fantasy, but with a very different premise) and The Gap Series (first book, The Real Story) which is science fiction but character driven in the same way as his fantasy.
While looking those up, I discovered that Donaldson has written some books I didn't know about. Aha! More for the TBR list.
Great post. Way back when I was a kid in high school and for year or two after, my friends and I would all read the same books, science fiction and fantasy, and hand them around. There was a group of us who played a D&D equivalent called The Fantasy Trip, (which I still say is better, especially the magic system). We all read The Lord of the Rings in or around 9th grade. We read Conan. We read Lovecraft. We read Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser. I read Clark Ashton Smith, and Gene Wolfe, but the other guys found the vocabulary to be a chore. We read Michael Moorcock, Elric especially. And, pertinent here, we all read Donaldson. I read this trilogy, and I vividly recall not liking it, and getting into a dispute with my friend Bob who died a couple of years ago way too early. (As an aside, it took me about 40 years to convince him that, conceding the greatness of the Beatles, the Stones are better than the Beatles, and he saw the light not too long before he died.) Bob loved the Covenant books. And I said, I found him so loathsome I couldn't enjoy it. I was home from my first year of college for the summer and working at the mushroom farm -- really. And Bob said, wait, you liked Elric! Which I conceded. And he reminded me that I had been in a similar conversation with our mutual friend Mike, who was the game master for our TFT universe. Mike hated Elric, and asked how can you make a hero out of a guy who was chaotic evil? And I was pro-Elric, and somehow I justified it. And Bob said, so, how come you switched sides? And I'm not sure. Donaldson was a competent writer. The books are well constructed. I read the three books, or now trying to recall all the way back to the Summer of 1982 -- I was 19 -- I think I gave up during the third one. The unremitting negativity was too much for me. Maybe Moorcock with Elric is more playing at evil, a stylishly decadent villain as a way for the writer to be clever. Donaldson had none of that. As I recall it, he depicts Covenant as a betrayer of good people for literally no reason, just brutal, callous, warped treachery, somehow based on his own perverted self-pity. I wanted to kill the guy off to put him out of his misery. Fascinating that you rediscovered these books and like them so much. And your mention of Vietnam reminds me of how damaged a whole generation of people was by that war and the betrayal it involved, even if they did not personally serve in uniform. If anything we underestimate the total derailment of American culture, hopefulness, and optimism that the Vietnam war caused, and the cynicism we have lived with ever since, which started there. Donaldson seems like a symptom of that era, very much a boomer.