Heroic fantasy stalks our anti-heroic age as if bent on providing a thesis for every cultural sociologist in the land. What keeps people reading? Part of the answer may be found in Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles. Thomas Covenant, divorced by his wife after the discovery of his leprosy, nurses a numbed obsession with bare physical survival and a helpless rage at the vicious persecution of the frightened local townspeople. An inexplicable accident transports him to another world, "the Land," where he finds himself and his useless wedding ring regarded as mighty powers in an epic struggle. Lovers of the genre will find some striking variations. Covenant comes into the Land not as a clear-browed savior but as an agent of rejection and violence, anesthetized by belief in the unreality of the "dream"-world where his leprosy is healed. The consequences of his first actions in the Land are closely compounded of good and evil, and it is long before he can accept "real" responsibility for both. The handling of the character often collapses into trivial whining, but as a framing image, Covenant is decidedly effective. As for the Land itself, Donaldson does not seem to have it in his bones as Tolkien did Middle-earth, but the various topographies and inhabitants are imagined with a certain solidity. Curiously, the evil powers are least convincing, dissipated in a haze of silly nomenclature ("Drool Rockworm," "Satansfist," the "ur-viles") and cliche-filled descriptions of yellow eyes and green flames. Only the "good" characters (notably a merry and infinitely forbearing Giant) achieve anything approaching life. Unfortunately the writing does not live up to the larger virtues: one may pass without warning from a strong and telling phrase to "empty inanition," people shouting in "livid" voices, Covenant refusing a meal because "the thought of eating made his raw nerves nauseous." Still, if this is a mess, it is a mess of more than occasional stature. Preachier than Tolkien, yet conversely conveying a more sophisticated sense of moral complexities, Donaldson's trilogy is a Hawed and erratic work, but not an inconsiderable one.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1977
ISBN: 0006473296
Page Count: 1160
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977
Then comes the fire storm and "It is so short and jumbled and jangled" . . . because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre but it is precise jumble and jangle, disconcerting and ultimately devastating.
Pub Date: March 21, 1969
ISBN: 0385312083
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969
IN THE NEWS
A smart and knotty merger of horror, fantasy, and realism.
A tragedy thrusts a mourning father into peculiar, otherworldly corners of New York City.
When Apollo and Emma have their baby, Brian, it feels like both reward and challenge for the new dad. Apollo, the son of a single mother, had been scraping by as a bookseller who hunts estate and garage sales for rare first editions, so even the unusual circumstance of Brian's birth (in a stalled subway train) seems like a blessing, as does the way Apollo stumbles across a first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird (inscribed by Harper Lee to Truman Capote, no less) shortly after. But after some young-parent squabbles and inexplicable images on their smartphones foreshadow trouble, the story turns nightmarish: Apollo finds himself tied up and beaten by Emma, then forced to listen to the sounds of Brian’s murder. LaValle has a knack for blending social realism with genre tropes (The Ballad of Black Tom, 2012, etc.), and this blend of horror story and fatherhood fable is surprising and admirably controlled. Though the plot is labyrinthine, it ultimately connects that first edition (“It’s just a story about a good father, right?”), Emma’s motivations, and the fate of their son, with enough room to contemplate everyday racism, the perils of personal technology, and the bookselling business as well. Built on brief, punchy chapters, the novel frames Apollo’s travels as a New York adventure tale, taking him from the basements of the Bronx to a small island in the East River that’s become a haven for misfit families to a seemingly sleepy neighborhood in Queens that’s the center of the story’s malevolence. But though the narrative takes Apollo to “magical places, where the rules of the world are different,” he’s fully absorbed the notion that fairy tales are manifestations of our deepest real-world anxieties. In that regard, LaValle has successfully delivered a tale of wonder and thoughtful exploration of what it means to be a parent.
A smart and knotty merger of horror, fantasy, and realism.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9594-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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