The Last Chronicles before The Last Dark

I've been meaning to review The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant since October. I came of age on the first and second series, now of course timeless classics, can still recite parts of them, and the third is a treat I never dared hope for. While I rank the Covenant books below The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire, Donaldson is actually a better writer than Tolkien or Martin, able to serve up mixtures of suffocating despair, intense thrills, and incredibly aesthetic prose. In a sense like Martin, his books are for fantasy haters, taking place in a world where heroes are self-loathing rapists and suicidal depressives, and even the most promising beacons of hope spell calamity. So with no further delay, here's how I feel about his return to the Land.

The Runes of the Earth (2004) sees the return of Linden Avery to a stale, mundane Land where Earthpower is unheard of and the Staff of Law gone, but before this comes a five-chapter prologue which in some ways -- and I hope I'm not damning the book on whole by saying this -- is the most suspenseful part. The Covenant books have always relied on prologues taking place in our "real" world to set the stage, but they're usually quite brief. For The Last Chronicles Donaldson serves up what is virtually a short story about Roger Covenant's abduction of his mother from a psychiatric hospital, and his kidnapping of Linden's mute son, which culminates, as once before, in the woods behind Haven Farm, with shafts of lightning pulverizing the ground in every direction, people getting shot by gunfire, and through all the rain, blood, and blackness, Lord Foul's fang-eyes burning with murderous hate. Linden's transition to the Land was almost a come down after this cracking narrative, so much that I wouldn't mind seeing Donaldson turn out suspense thrillers after he finishes The Last Dark.

It doesn't take long to get drawn back into the Land, however, given what happens next. It's been ten years for Linden, twice as long for us, and so it feels like we're in good hands when she's dropped on the familiar doorstep of Kevin's Watch -- until this cherished lookout is smashed to smithereens, and Linden survives the cascade only by inadvertently summoning wild magic. That's quite a reentry promising high-stakes danger, and Linden is shocked to find her health sense killed by Kevin's Dirt, an invisible smog that blinds the Land's inhabitants to Earthpower. She wastes no time hooking up with a Stonedowner and Haruchai, who along with an insane old babbler flee into the mountains where they are rescued by Ramen. From this point on, the novel focuses intently on both the Ramen and Haruchai cultures, their righteous immunity to evil machinations, and their stringent codes of honor and shame which despite themselves play into Lord Foul's purpose.

The Runes of the Earth is so saturated with themes of honor and shame, in fact, that it makes it ideal for review on this blog. The Haruchai are shamed by their past failures, the Ramen by exile, and both hold themselves to impossibly high standards -- a purity of purpose which almost guarantees failure in advance. This forces interesting questions about the inherent worth of honor, and holds the spotlight on multiculturalism. The guest blogger who once railroaded me would take a dim view of the Haruchai and Ramen, though Donaldson clearly respects them through their faults. So does Linden. She is challenged by both in austere rituals, and accepted collectively by the Ramen when the Ranyhyn show her unprecedented obeisance, but rejected by the Haruchai, save for Stave, on account of his vision in the horserite, who chooses to be ostracized for sake of friendship. In placing integrity above honor, Stave may be in danger of serving as a cheap foil -- implying that inside every honor-bound Haruchai there is a man of integrity waiting to come out -- but it would be a mistake to see this as Donaldson's purpose.

The insight, rather, seems to be that people who judge themselves by unreasonable standards don't count the cost of their solutions, and Stave is finally able to see this. Collective self-judgment is the critical point, as it informs judgment on everything and everyone else: "The Ramen were as draconian as the Haruchai, as absolute in their judgments. Both people rejected the reality of Foul's malevolence and the Land's vulnerability. Where the Masters sought to alter that reality, however, the Ramen had simply turned their backs on it." (p 271) When something good is misused, suppress it; when things get bad, leave. Frankly, these aren't always bad approaches, but in the context of mythic drama they prove drastic. In Runes they derive from feelings of shame and inadequacy, something Linden transcended in the Second Chronicles and so now accepts her limitations: "she could not be misled by despair, because she did not expect herself to be greater than she was" (p 133). The danger of Earthpower lies not in its use, as the Haruchai insist, but in the hearts of those who don't understand their vulnerability to despair; and the problem is that people from honor-shame cultures aren't especially sensitive to issues of vulnerability, having little patience with natural failings.

Ironically, it's the creatures spawned by evil who are able to atone for their past errors more effectively than the honorable Haruchai and Ramen. The ur-viles extend their purpose with Vain by helping Linden locate the lost Staff of Law, while the Waynhim have been preserving the Staff at a destructive cost to themselves. "That which is evil need not be so to the end" is a recurring motif throughout the Last Chronicles, and this blurring of good and evil is of course is classic Donaldson, but taken to another level, probably pre-figuring the restoration of Foul himself. There have been hints about Covenant and Foul becoming one, notably in the author's '90s interview with W.A. Senior. When asked what a third chronicles might look like if he ever attempted it, Donaldson replied with single-sentence summaries:

"In the First Chronicles, Thomas Covenant faces Lord Foul and defeats him. In the Second, he surrenders to Lord Foul and accepts him. In the Last, he becomes Lord Foul. Following the psychological paradigm through, what happens at the point that you become your own other self is that you become whole, and the universe is made new."

But what does it take to get there? Will Covenant/Foul have to destroy the earth in order for it to be made new? The yin-yang paradigm seems to demand Covenant becoming evil as much as Foul becoming good, and that's probably where The Last Dark is going.

Some have charged that the stakes don't feel particularly high in the Last Chronicles, and on a surface level that's true. The Sunbane was an omnipresent horror, whereas caesures (falls) are sporadic; under the Clave people killed family and neighbors to survive, but now the Stonedowners and Woodhelvinin just live in stale ignorance. Horrors have become less graphic and more philosophical, but that there is an escalation of menace is undeniable. Foul isn't wasting his energies on Earthpower this time (content to let the Masters suppress it, and Kevin's Dirt obscure it); he's going after time itself, condensing all moments and none into discrete whirlwinds of destruction, and summoning extinct horrors out of the past. Time travel is always a risky business, but Donaldson handles it well, and the novel's most memorable chapter is Linden's riding the fall back in time to a point shortly after her victory over the Sunbane: her use of Joan's white gold makes the time travel possible, while the ur-viles' lore protects everyone from being broken by it, and the Ranyhyn's time sensitive instincts enable them to exit the fall at around the right time and place. Her experience inside the fall, however, is what really sells the event: the sensations of arctic cold and biting hornets burrowing into her flesh, and a torturous rending that would kill if not for the fact that no time passes inside a fall in which one could cease to live. It's powerful stuff, but there's still no denying that from a dramatic point of view, the Sunbane was the most brutal poison ever inflicted on the Land, and for that reason I doubt the Last Chronicles will surpass the Second despite this colossal ambition with time and falls.

The other problem, to me the more acute one, lies in the role of Linden. In the first series Covenant was a self-hating rapist who refused to believe in the Land, and the story stood on the strength of his knifing anti-heroism. By the second series he had come to terms with his unbelief and was more proactive, thus more likable, but less interesting; Linden compensated for that with twice the amount of self-loathing and despair he ever had. But she has likewise overcome her demons -- homicidal and suicidal impulses owing to horrendous parents -- and thus is also less interesting. In fact, rather alarmingly, she's become a Dirty Harry, motivated by sheer outrage over her kidnapped son. This gives The Last Chronicles a vengeful color, and I miss the inner dysfunctional torment that made the first two chronicles what they were.

At the same time, on a more profound level, it's actually the second and last chronicles which promise to pair over and surpass the first. The real deficiency of the first series lies in the contest of muscle, as Donaldson himself once noted. For all its grim anti-heroism and white gold paradoxes, it's remarkably straightforward, and Lord Foul a clearly defined and predictable foe. Even worse is the Tolkien baggage, especially in the first and third books. Lord Foul's Bane gave us a Gollum equivalent and quest for an artifact coveted by the creature, leading to a mountain and fiery eruptive climax. In The Power That Preserves we relived the Siege of Gondor at Revelstone, while Covenant and Foamfollower made for Foul's Mordor, and the latter even carried the former over ash. The Second Chronicles not only shed the Tolkien trappings, but raised the stakes infinitely with an enemy who attacked sideways and unpredictably, a devastated Land with no hope at all, and a quest that failed -- all across a single complex epic rather than three self-contained volumes. The Last Chronicles follows these strengths, with Lord Foul operating behind the scenes in ways we can only guess at, so that the people of the Land become his unwitting pawns; and in a story that's likewise completely on its own terms. On top of this, there is another enemy working at cross-purposes with Foul, making things even more convoluted. If the first series involved a Tolkienesque collision of armies, the second and third involve deeper conflicts in which armies are useless and there aren't any around to speak of anyway.

That's a long way of saying that if the rest of the Last Chronicles is like this book, it doesn't stand a chance of topping the Second, but it may well surpass the First. The next book is bound to launch missiles now that Thomas Covenant is onstage. Since The Gap Cycle, Donaldson has become a master of cliffhangers, and the sight of our hero galloping up to Revelstone with Jeremiah in tow gave me shivers. But is Runes just an extended prologue for the return of Covenant? Not really, no; it has more than enough plotting, and plenty of philosophical meat, to make it stand as a full leg of a table.

The first half of Fatal Revenant (2007) bucks and jumps with some of the best writing Donaldson has ever put on paper; the second half drags at the same pace taken through the forest of Salva Glidenbourne. The result is the most disjointed novel in the entire Covenant chronicles, making it rather hard to assess, and so we'll take the two parts in turn.

Covenant's comeback is a ripper that never cheats. Happy reunions are foreign in these chronicles, but I was still taken aback by the first words out of his mouth: "Hellfire, Linden! Put that damn thing out!" Donaldson hasn't lost his touch, and from this point the narrative punches forward with heartbreak, guessing games, lies, half-lies, and betrayals. For Covenant is not really Covenant (or at least not Thomas), and Jeremiah has a demon. They are Roger and croyel under a powerful glamour, sent by Foul to keep Linden out of Andelain at all costs, and take her back in time to a point when the Blood of the Earth is accessible, so that Roger can drink it and command the Worm of the World's End to wake up and start the apocalypse -- if Linden cannot be persuaded to give up her ring. None of this is remotely guessable until the eleventh chapter. Covenant, despite going out of his way to alienate, compels with his dark intentions.

For Donaldson to pull this off demands consistently intricate writing by even his standards: Covenant's demeanor has to be as convincing as his arguments every step of the way. The first is the easier task, because the unbeliever has always been sardonically unpleasant; Roger (like father, like son) hardly needs to play the role of a sweetie-pie to win us over. So when he keeps lashing out at Linden with nastiness, in many ways he's giving us the man we've always known. Still, it is excessive, but he attributes this to the strain of keeping him and Jeremiah in two places at once. And when Linden desperately tries to understand his mean-spiritedness at Melenkurion Skyweir, Roger is able to feign a wonderful sense of spiritual loss: "I miss my life, Linden. I miss living. When you made that Staff, you trapped me. I know it's not what you intended, but it's what you did. I've been stuck for millennia. It made me bitter. I yell because I hurt." (p 250) This feels so right that there is no good reason to question it; I was almost weeping for Covenant at this point.

The second issue, the logics of the deception, is more difficult, but I was completely taken in by the profusion of bullshit. Roger's accounts make perfect sense given what Donaldson has established about white gold, the Staff of Law, the Arch of Time, and their interrelations. We are to understand that Covenant is still embedded in the Arch of Time, and Jeremiah still Foul's prisoner, but Covenant has folded time so that he and Jeremiah can be in two places at once; because this breaks so many rules, Linden can easily undo the fold and cause time to snap back into place, killing the present incarnations; the Staff of Law is the chief liability in this regard, which Covenant reacts to like a vampire does a cross. All of this treats the polarities of wild magic and Law with the appropriate respect, and nothing seems bogus in these explanations.

Moreover, when Covenant accuses Linden of actually having done more harm than good by taking his ring and creating a Staff of Law, his reasoning is disturbingly compelling. He claims that without Law stifling him, in the Arch he could have healed the Land more effectively than she did, and put Lord Foul away for good. "What do you think I'm doing here?", he charges before answering his own question: "I'm still trying to clean up your mess." If that sounds gratuitously unkind, it also sounds like a cold truth, lending force to his claim that he's going to use the Power of Command to freeze time around Lord Foul, "something he would have already done if she hadn't created that damn Staff" (p 137). And even though she knows the Covenant of old would have never held her accountable for consequences she couldn't have foreseen, this is again a Covenant emptied of empathy by bitterness and strain.

There are, to be sure, subtle hints that something is wrong. Linden senses that Covenant "is like a man who knew the words but could not remember the song" (p 71), but again we, like Linden, expect this from someone who's been out of touch with his humanity for three and a half millennia and must have lost a part of himself in the Arch (pp 112, 135). And while it's true that she grows increasingly distrustful of him after he apparently lies about Jeremiah still needing rescuing after he deals with Foul (pp 151-152, 157), that comes across as a device to make us feel for a wounded protagonist robbed of her son; we just don't know enough about Jeremiah's strange role that would warrant Covenant's deception or not. Her antipathy goes over the edge when he sadistically recounts the bruises he paid back Inbull for the bullying of Jeremiah (pp 211, 222), but at this point I was even more convinced that Donaldson wanted us to be misled by Linden's aversion; from the '90s interview with W.A. Senior, we know that Covenant is going to "become Lord Foul" in some way, which is what this gleeful sadism looks like. I did find it a bit odd that Covenant, whose omniscience includes knowing what Berek Halfhand had for breakfast on any given day, could be ignorant of where Foul is keeping Jeremiah prisoner, or even where Lord Foul is; but that suspicion was mitigated by his claim that he needs his ring back -- that even though he "is" the white gold, his power has limits without the artifact itself. There's just no solid reason to suspect Covenant is anything other than who he claims to be, and that he fully intends to use the Power of Command in the way he says.

Which brings me, finally, to the Blood of the Earth. This astounding climax is clearly from the same author who gave us the nerve-shredding cliffhangers of A Dark and Hungry God Arises and Chaos and Order, where we feel, in the words of a famous critic, "narrative crescendos that build and build and keep on building, unremittingly, until they have reached a pitch which no composer of texts has ever attained before". I felt my blood rush as Linden yelled "Show me the truth!", killing the glamour that fooled her (and us) for half a book, and then bellowed the Seven Words, channeling the might of the mountain and bringing it down around Roger's ears. It's a beautiful payoff to the Theomach's entreating Berek in her presence.

And on that subject: In exploiting the time travel plotting of the Last Chronicles, Donaldson is able to go places that are usually the province of inferior fantasy prequels; we get to meet Berek Halfhand in the context of high-stakes end games. Stripped of romantic legend, he's exactly what I wanted: he's not a superhero, his Warhaft is a sadist, and he barely understands the Earthpower he supposedly unlocked. Indeed it was not he who summoned the Fire Lions, but they who came to him; and the victory on Mount Thunder wasn't the triumph claimed by oral history. Two years later, Berek is still mopping up the King's men, and rather the worse for wear for it. Linden's dealings with him are crisp -- she must watch her every sentence lest she alter time -- but it's nice that she's able to show him what hurtloam is, and heal his wasted soldiers on death's door.

Then there is Carroil Wildwood, last seen in The Illearth War, my favorite character of the entire chronicles, and whom I'd fear for my life even on my best behavior. He's the best (certainly most efficient) forest guardian portrayed in fantasy literature, outdoing even Treebeard, a being of immeasurable power devoted not merely to killing those who mean harm to his forest, but to the total extermination of those who intrude on it. An "out and out butcher", Covenant calls him, and accurately; he spares no one, save those in unique positions to help his cause. Linden is almost caught in the crossfire when he assaults the Viles, and the brilliant depiction of Wildwood's song is worth citing:

"She felt as well as heard an abrupt cavalcade of music among the trees. It shocked her... The leaves sang a myriad-throated melody of ineffable loveliness while the twigs and boughs contributed chords of aching harmony and trunks added a chaconne as poignant as a lament. Each note seemed as pristine and new as the first dew of springtime, dulcet as daisies, thorny as briars. Together the thousands upon thousands of notes fashioned a song of such heartbreaking beauty that Linden would have wept to hear it if she had not been trying feverishly to run... [Yet] within the profound glory of the music lay a savage power. Her nerves were stunned by the sheer magnitude of the magic which the singing summoned. It was not mere beauty and grief: it was also a tsunami of rage. Somewhere beyond the hillside, Caerroil Wildwood must have come to the verge of the Deep; and there he sang devastation for every living being that opposed him." (p 234)

Linden, of course, is ultimately spared by Wildwood on the strength of her promise to save the forests in the future, for which he rewards her in advance by accentuating the Staff with mysterious runes.

She is then returned to the present time by the Mahdoubt, at which point Fatal Revenant deflates. The journey to Andelain sags under grueling treks and fatiguing battle sequences. The problem is that Donaldson brings out too many big guns, and without warning, that they collapse under their own weight. The Insequent are fascinating but have a deus-ex-machina quality that makes the Harrow's vanquishing of the Demondim a non-event. The return of the Sandgorgons is especially cheap, and the chaos of Roger's army of cavewights on top of Esmer's caesure doesn't deliver the excitement it should. By the time we get to the skurj -- the creatures we've been waiting for -- I was too battle-slammed to be much impressed, though they are admittedly nasty beings. On top of all this, we get a lazy, carbon-copy repeat of the Giant's mission from the Second Chronicles. Longwrath is Cable Seadreamer all over again; Coldspray the First of the Search. It's as if Donaldson exhausted himself with all of the grand innovation of the first part of the book and had to coast on sterility to get his second wind in Andelain.

But where a stupendous climax awaits. Linden has intended all along to use Loric's krill to harness the contradictory powers of the Staff of Law and white gold, but in particular to resurrect Covenant from the dead, and this will apparently spell disaster so off the scales as to wake up the Worm and start the apocalypse (which had been Roger's intent with the Power of Command). The powers-that-be are terrified enough that Infelice herself makes an appearance to stop her, revealing in desperation why the Elohim tried so hard to get her to take Covenant's place during the Sunbane: to avert what she's trying to do now. For as a wielder of white gold which wasn't truly hers, but which could have been tamed by her Sun-Sage talents, she would have posed no hazards to the Arch of Time and could have dealt with Foul in a way that would have made a Staff of Law unnecessary.

It's fascinating that the Elohim have always considered the Staff a last resort solution (provided in Findail), or lesser of potential evils, since it constrains Covenant's function in the Arch of Time, thus posing eternal hazards. "By wild magic, he came into being," says Infelice, "and by your deeds, he was made weak." This disturbingly echoes Roger's argument when he was disguised as Covenant, proving that he spoke at least partial truths about the Staff of Law. Even more disturbing is the casual willingness of the Elohim to suffer pollutions like the Sunbane as long as the Arch is secure. But as always, there are deeper and riskier truths, even if Linden doesn't really understand them, and the cliffhanger is a wonderful shocker: our hero -- the real thing this time -- is called back into life, leaving the Arch of Time completely undefended.

Fatal Revenant is thus two novellas in a novel, one as epic and thrilling as The Wounded Land and The One Tree -- and even better than both of these, I think -- the other the weakest thing we've seen from Donaldson since Lord Foul's Bane. A schizophrenic volume like this points uncertainly ahead, but with the real Covenant back now, and black chaos approaching, I'm expecting raw, unbridled deliverance.

Against All Things Ending (2010) is best characterized as having a transcendent start, a blow-out finish, and a lot of vacuum in between. The vacuum pulls me in in a good way, however, as I'm easily enraptured by inner, tormented redundancies and philosophical bickering. The vitriol that has been heaped on this book doesn't terribly surprise me, but most of the perceived weaknesses I count as strengths, though I realize this amounts to little more than saying that Donaldson's writing style happens to feed my self-indulgences, even when out of control. While not much happens compared to the previous books, I couldn't put it down, and that's more than I can say for the second half of Fatal Revenant.

But first things first: Covenant's resurrection. It passes brilliantly for a dark version of the Johannine incarnation, the "white gold becoming flesh", and no accolades can do the writing on display justice. (Read the full text of the passage here to have your mind blown.) To describe Linden's act as one of mad desperation or selfish love would be accurate, but the horror of it doesn't stop Covenant from being awed, as he expects Linden, as always, to transcend herself through abomination. And she has only days to act before the end of all things.

Amusingly, the time crunch doesn't prevent five prolonged chapters of anguished second-guessing, self recriminations, and heated arguments (which evidently piss off many readers, but gratify me to no end), before everyone strikes into the Lost Deep to rescue Jeremiah. Not only is this the only course that will appease Linden, but it's clear by now that the Land's fate is tied to her son. Foul, Kastenessen, and Roger have wanted his talents, but so does the Harrow, who in a chilling passage is compelled by the Ardent to reveal his true intentions: to use Jeremiah's powers to construct a cage of permanent slumber for the Worm, thereby depriving the Elohim of all purpose and worth, which will probably kill their existence. To do this, however, he needs more than just white gold and Earthpower, but also the unique magics of the croyel, which he intends to leave on Jeremiah's back hideously possessing and feeding on him.

The Lost Deep itself turns out to be a place of astonishing beauty, with incredibly fluid architectures that impose sensory contradictions. Linden "would have seen smells, felt colors, tasted voices, if the Viles had not frozen water and theurgy into permanence" (p 144). Mixed in with this grandeur are occasional repulsions of Despite, reminding us of the Viles' ultimate corruption, worst seen in the room containing Jeremiah. The showdown in this cavern is bloody fantastic: Roger vilely slays the Harrow (frankly I was cheering the son of a bitch on), exchanges insults and flame with his father, whose hands in turn are burned to uselessness from Joan's assault through the krill; when Roger tries vanishing with Jeremiah, Esmer explodes furiously through the stone floor and intervenes, requiring a vicious betrayal on his part involving She Who Must Not Be Named.

This bane from below demands attention. On the one hand, she's a nasty piece of work, an amorphous beast containing the souls of thousands of devoured women, the faces of whom are visible and howl horribly in torment. This thrice-damned creature turns out to be the source of Kevin's Dirt, created by Kastenessen and Esmer in order to obstruct Law, and the effect she has on Linden is horrendous, draining her ability to tap into Earthpower, and pummeling her with disgusting sensations of carrion -- maggots feasting on her eyes, spiders in her ears, centipedes up her cunt, and more. On the other hand, I don't know what Donaldson was thinking with the moniker She Who Must Not Be Named. For an author with a genius ear, this is an astounding display of incompetence, not to mention a rip-off of Harry Potter, and jarringly evokes images of juvenile fantasy throughout a dark part of the quest. It's not even clear why the bane can't be named, and seems like a melodramatic contrivance. But she does give good payoff, especially at the climax when Covenant brandishes his ring futilely, and Elena is summoned only to be defeated by the bane and become grossly part of it -- as if his daughter hasn't been through enough hell for the past seven millennia.

And a word about Covenant. In the opinion of many, he's too useless in this book. He's unable to remember anything from his eternity spent in the Arch, unwilling to use power, and catatonic half the time; in this light it seems incredible he could have been godlike. But Donaldson fans should know better, and I'm not just talking about the way the author enjoys making things impossibly difficult for his characters (though that's true as well). A major point of the chronicles is that power, like innocence, is ultimately impotent. As Covenant reflects beneath Landsdrop, and in a very non-Judeo-Christian way:

"No wonder only people like Roger and creatures like the croyel wanted to be gods. The sheer impotence of that state would appall a chunk of basalt -- if the basalt happened to care about anything except itself. Absolute power was as bad as powerlessness for anybody who valued someone else's peace or happiness or even survival. The Creator could only make or destroy worlds: he could not rule them, nurture them, assist them. He was simply too strong to express himself within the constraints of Time. By that standard, forgetfulness was Covenant's only real hope. No matter how badly he wanted to remember, he needed his specific form of ignorance; absolutely required it. Nothing less would prevent him from violating the necessity of freedom." (p 253)

There is more. In a brilliant inverse to the exchange under Melenkurion Skyweir, where "Covenant" (Roger) justified his ill treatment of Linden by appealing to spiritual brokenness, so now the real Covenant tries to assuage her pain at being pushed away: "I'm broken, Linden. I told you. I don't know what I'm becoming, and I don't know what I'll have to do about it. I trust you. It's me I'm worried about." (p 318) That's the Covenant we (certainly I) should have been looking for in Fatal Revenant, someone who self-accuses more than self-justifies, and believes in others more than himself.

With Jeremiah rescued from imprisonment, the focus then turns to the unpleasant attempts to free him from the croyel itself. This happens around two assaults on the company beneath Landsdrop and the tragic deaths of characters whose purposes come to fruition. The exorcism is arduous: Linden attacks the demon with everything at her disposal, but with the Staff finds that the necessary slow efforts would break Jeremiah down and kill him; and that while the white gold could blast through the croyel's brain directly without hurting the boy's consciousness, the demon would go down incinerating his mind. Her helpless attempts go on for eight pages (pp 322-330), until her display of power finally calls down the fury of six caesures, which she can barely fend off as Liand decides to attempt his own exorcism with the Sunstone.

The death of Liand is something of a mixed bag, both tragic and strangely anti-climactic, and the same goes for Anele during the second assault of Roger's cavewights. It's good to see Donaldson treating exorcisms with the gravitas they deserve: messing with demonic powers gets you killed. The problem is that there hasn't been enough development of the Stonedowners to make their sacrifices hit quite as hard as they should. Even worse is Esmer, who in his typical fashion appears out of nowhere to prevent Anele's success, and the ur-viles appear too and before we know it slap their manacles on him and destroy his purpose once and for all. This get-out-of-jail free card stands in contrast to the painstaking development of Vain in the Second Chronicles, and cheapens the ur-viles' labors. Galt's sacrifice, on the other hand, is wonderful, and the revelation that he is Stave's son well played; in the end he chooses his father's devotion to Linden over the demands of the Humbled. (Amidst all the slaughter and dying, there is an amusing point at which Roger gets his cavewight cut out from under him, and he sprawls on his ass, causing me to bray laughter -- and this especially on top of his endless fury that with the croyel slain, Jeremiah is now beyond his retrieval.)

Despite its lukewarm execution, the battle for Jeremiah's soul is a pivotal moment in the Last Chronicles, and leaves us wondering about the role he has absorbed from Anele as "the Land's last hope". We learn that a short stop away from the Shattered Hills, where he builds a cage out of strange bones and is able to completely free his mind and speak. Before this, however, a wrathful Infelice appears and gives Linden a tongue-lashing that outdoes her performance in Andelain, and it's fascinating, as always, to hear what passes for Elohim stewardship. To be fair, Infelice isn't operating out of sheer self-interest; not only do Jeremiah's cages threaten the Elohim, they can imprison the Creator himself, and this is apparently what the Despiser wants him for. Still, it's long reached the point where I don't trust these Earthpower deities at all. They're way too self-serving, and always aim for safe or lesser-evil solutions that solve nothing. I'd even ally with the Insequent before them, and that's saying something; at least they (through the Ardent) are willing to gamble on risky choices and trust Linden.

The final act of Against All Things Ending excels in the manner of all Donaldson cliffhangers, and allows the resurrected Covenant to show some usefulness after all, by murdering his ex-wife. I couldn't think of a better use for the krill myself; Joan has been damned beyond hope for too long. I was deeply unsettled by the tsunami, which he barely evades, and even by keeping his oath to the Ranyhyn: the Humbled grab his arms and hold his body between them while furiously galloping inland. It's an entertaining spectacle, but also a bit sickening in the wake of Japan's recent crisis and a film like Hereafter -- tsunamis, I'm convinced, are as evil as Lord Foul. As for the stars going out, that's strangely reminiscent of the season-five finale of Doctor Who, and while it's doubtful that Moffat and Donaldson were aware of each other's intentions, it's curious that their penultimate apocalypses came out the same year.

Against All Things Ending is neither the worst Covenant book (that award goes to Lord Foul's Bane) nor the underrated treasure claimed by few apologists, but a successful volume that glides with an abundnace of psychological anguish, pleasingly high body counts, and crushing sense of hopelessness that makes Donaldson what he is. I hope he goes out stronger in The Last Dark and reattains the absolute greatness displayed in the Second Chronicles and first half of Fatal Revenant. If he can do that, he'll have done the impossible with third sequels.


The First Chronicles -- 4

Lord Foul's Bane -- 3
The Illearth War -- 5
The Power that Preserves -- 4

The Second Chronicles -- 5

The Wounded Land -- 5
The One Tree -- 5
White Gold Wielder -- 4 ½

The Last Chronicles -- 4 (so far)

The Runes of the Earth -- 4
Fatal Revenant -- 5/3
Against All Things Ending -- 4
The Last Dark -- ?

A Good Man Goes to a Not-War

I usually don't review Doctor Who two-parters until they're finished, but I'm not going to sit on the mid-series finale until fall. For it needs saying that despite the wide acclaim for A Good Man Goes to War, it's not terribly impressive. It's rather a lot of non-story and cobbled together fanwank that feels consistently undramatic throughout.

The first piece of un-drama is the not-war, completely failing the title's promise. We are to understand that the powers of Demon's Run are so frightened of the Doctor that they kidnap his companion's daughter, whom they know will become a Timelord, in order to use against him as a weapon. Yet in a room full of armed soldiers, they allow him to grandstand without shooting him. This is worse than his motormouthing against the Silence at the end of Day of the Moon, where at least River Song had a gun trained on the baddies to maintain some credibility. When all is said and done, it certainly doesn't feel like the Doctor has risen "higher than ever before", as River forecasted, nor do we get anything remotely approaching his dark side seen in stories like Waters of Mars and Amy's Choice. It feels like what it is: a not-war in which the Doctor saunters onto a base, has a bit of fun on stage, and is suddenly in control.

Of course, the point of the not-war is that the Doctor is being allowed to take over Demon's Run and rescue Amy's daughter as part of a bluff. The baby turns out to be an almost substitute in the same way Amy herself has been throughout the season. But even here the suspense doesn't carry as it should, for two reasons. First, the identity of the baby hasn't been the mightiest of mysteries; a link between Lady River and Ms. Pond has been suspected for some time. It's not even clear in any case why River being Amy's daughter had to be kept such a dark secret all this time. But more to the point: the cliffhanger is so feel-good and happy that it's both undramatic and melodramatic despite the revelation. When most of our heroes are standing around smiling and giggling, the stakes couldn't feel any lower, when it's the Doctor himself who is supposed to be brought "lower than ever before".

The third bit of un-drama is the lack of scares, a cardinal sin in any Doctor Who story. The headless monks were a wasted opportunity, and used so ineffectively beyond converting a soldier at the beginning. Not even Eyepatch Lady (Madame Kovorian) feels terribly menacing. But what really caps it all off is the host of villains -- Silurians, Sontarans, Judoon, etc. -- who are far-fetchedly assembled as the Doctor's allies on account of debts they owe him. It's rubbish, really, and starting to look like fanwank formula on Moffat's part. At least in The Pandorica Opens, the fanwank was pressed into the service of an actual menace, as the Stonehenge Alliance opposed the Doctor and threw him into an eternal prison. Here we get a benign Sontaran nurse and a Dexter-like Silurian who kills serial killers, while the best the opposition can boast is a loud-mouthed colonel who's full of bluster and hot air and nothing more.

I again realize that it's not really fair to judge a two-parter halfway through, and I'm hoping that Let's Kill Hitler will deliver the goods like the The Big Bang paid off its own rather questionable precursor. But if I had to rate A Good Man Goes to War on its own, it would get 2 stars out of 5, making it easily the most disappointing installment so far of season six.

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People

Clone and android stories were something of a common recurrence in the classic period, for convenient budgetary reasons no doubt, but they still relied on additional villains to supply the scares. In Terror of the Zygons, it was the Zygons themselves using replicant bays to transform themselves into exact look-alikes of captive humans; in The Android Invasion, the Kraals were the ones pulling strings behind the scenes; in The Horror of Fang Rock, the Rutons assumed the human forms of their victims for purposes of infiltration; and The Androids of Tara was carried on the back of the fiendishly diabolical Count Grendel. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People takes the more daring approach of allowing clones to stand on their own, but with their flesh phase-shifting often enough to remind us that they're really "monsters", and in almost-Jenny's case she even transforms into a copycat creature out of The Lazarus Experiment. It all works pretty well in the context of doppelgangers who know and feel everything their human originators do, forcing critical questions about the sanctity of life.

These questions, however, blindside us to what's really going on. There is a dark manipulative side to the Doctor at work before the story even begins, as he acts with a plan up his sleeve instead of blundering blindly into a situation and doing his best to sort it out. When the TARDIS is "caught" in a solar tsunami, of all things, it is being hurled deliberately to a time and place that will allow the Doctor to learn how to destroy Amy, whom he suspects is rather less than she seems. That in the process he shows himself to be concerned with fair play to both humans and their enemies does not effect this conclusion; in the end he callously blasts almost-Amy to smithereens. The audience is invited to ask -- though few reviewers ask it -- whether his moral outrage over the murder of almost-Buzzer can be taken seriously. This isn't a complaint on my part, mind you, for it's a wonderful hypocrisy, so typical of the Seventh Doctor who also used companions as pawns to suit his ends.

In any case, this is an impressive story saturated with homage: the isolated monastery setting, an acid-mining operation using slave labor, base-under-siege suspense, and running down corridors. Add to this Tom Baker's shockingly intrusive voice asking after jelly-babies and you've got a classic-Who stew. The cliffhanger is predictable though effective, and gives Matt Smith a golden opportunity to have fun with himself throughout the second part. Lines like "I'm starting to get a sense of how impressive it is to hang out with me," and the effortless manner in which he and his almost-twin finish each others' sentences, oddly complement the way he faced off his TARDIS persona in The Doctor's Wife. Season six seems to involve a sub-theme of the Doctor being forced to interact with himself in curious ways.

Amy speaks for the audience when she wonders if the almost-Doctor will be the one to die two hundred years later at the hands of the astronaut, but that would be a cheap ploy. The doppelganger ultimately (if again predictably) sacrifices himself for the benefit of others, and I pray the remarks about molecular memory surviving aren't a forecast. But if the Doctor's twin is too predictable, the two almost-Jennifers compensate with enough surprises to keep us on edge. As much as I can't stand Rory, I feel for him as he's crushed by Jennifer's death, and I never saw the second ganger coming. His performance is believable, and let's be frank, given his Auton baggage and pathetic beta male personality, he and a beast like almost-Jennifer are made for each other. Amy certainly deserves better than a child of his, if that's in fact what she's carrying. Which leads me neatly onto...

The fluctuating pregnancy. It would be a dereliction of duty to avoid talking about this cliffhanger, which has fans in every corner of the web nattering like magpies, even to the detraction of the actual story. That it's a joltingly fantastic scene cannot be denied -- like Rory's death at the end of The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, but even more so -- and points to an imminent pay-off with the eye-patch woman. But it pays off the story at hand too, for Amy has been almost all along this season, which nicely accounts for her bonding with the almost-Doctor thinking he's the real one, for naturally, to almost-her, he was. This goes a long way in ameliorating the non-surprise of who the real Doctor was (I saw the swap coming right away), and has us holding out hope for the fate of her real self, and child, in the mid-season finale. Push.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

The Doctor's Wife

I approached The Doctor's Wife with caution. Billed in advance as an enigmatic love story which would tap into the roots of Doctor Who while remaining faithful to the spirit of the new series, I wondered if Neil Gaiman bit off more than he could chew; and the episode title so reminiscent of the fourth season's atrocious The Doctor's Daughter didn't inspire confidence. On the other hand, Gaiman is an outstanding innovator of dark fantasy, and I suspected that if anyone could pull off a story like this, it would be he. As things turn out, The Doctor's Wife is a splendid achievement, and one of the best stories of the new series, certainly the best so far this season.

A note first, about the plot: the premise that drives The Doctor's Wife isn't terribly solid. It takes place on a junkyard wasteland outside the universe, where the preserved cries of dead Time Lords have been calling out to any of their own kind who will come for rescue. As noted by Doug Chaplin, the Gallifreyans at the height of their power would hardly have failed to be aware of this and take action against kidnappers of their own race. But a plot hole like this is fairly invisible in the context of a Doctor Who fairy tale. The Girl in the Fireplace had even more ludicrous plot holes and lapses in logic, but you never hear anyone complain about them, because the kind of story it is allows for more leniency. (Oppositely, the whacking inconsistencies in a story like Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways stand out so embarrassingly to bring it down a notch.) Fans are notoriously fickle about these things, of course, but in my view, the problem spotted by Chaplin doesn't intrude on the integrity of the story. One could easily chalk it up to some kind of barrier field erected by House that rendered his scrap dominion impervious to Gallifreyan penetration, long since discarded after the Time War.

The Doctor's Wife is so many things condensed into a 45-minute drama that it's a wonder it doesn't feel rushed. The "wife" is the essence of the TARDIS poured into a human being, giving it voice, and its (her) scenes with the Doctor are critical to the story's success. Idris is a great character, constantly speaking out of tense as she lives moments of the Doctor's life in non-linear fashion, and insisting on an equal playing field by telling the Doctor that it was she in fact who stole him, not the other way around. In a perfectly geeky way, the TARDIS gives him what no other "woman" can (not even River Song, I'll wager), constant adventure, which he gives her back in turn. The ending is rather predictable, but only in the way stories like Father's Day and The Girl in the Fireplace are predictable, with that sense of tragic inevitability that plays so authentically: the Doctor needs his real TARDIS back; Idris has to die. This is the first time Matt Smith has reached an emotional pitch that brought me to tears: when he says good-bye, and Idris corrects him by saying "No, I wanted to say hello", and they both start breaking down, I was doing the same.

Special mention must be made of House, the asteroid voiced by Michael Sheen. There is only one voice in the history of the program oozing more frightening malevolence, that of Gabriel Woolf, whose Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars gave me nightmares as a kid and whose Satan in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit made me relive them as an adult. The right voice for this omnipresent villain is as crucial as Idris' character, and Sheen's pays dividends; when he suddenly possesses Auntie and Uncle and speaks through them simultaneously, it feels like a throw-back to The Impossible Planet in more ways than one, since an Ood is present in this story too, and who again works the diabolical will as a pawn.

As if all this weren't enough, I still haven't mentioned the best scenes, which involve Amy and Rory trapped inside the darkened TARDIS infested by House, who torments them with his voice out of hell. Here we're treated to old-fashioned running down corridors, and a tasty look at other parts of the TARDIS, including the "old control room" from the Davies period, which in turn is a throw back to the famous secondary control room with ornate wood panels introduced in The Masque of Mandragora. So chilling is it when House asks Amy and Rory, "Why shouldn't I kill you?", and then proceeds to brutally fuck with their minds, shutting them off from each other, then rejoining them in horrific ways. I particularly enjoyed it when Amy turned a corner and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of hate phrases covering the walls, "KILL AMY - DIE AMY - HATE AMY," scrawled by Rory who has withered to a skeletal corpse, which topped even the earlier confrontation with his two-thousand year old self bellowing furiously at her for leaving him.

In sum, The Doctor's Wife does what classic Who used to do perfectly, papering over plot holes with so much style they don’t matter, and serving up serious dread, making kids and all of us happy to be terrified. It also does what the new series has been doing so well when on top of its game, in portraying the triumph of the soul. Neil Gaiman is the new Paul Cornell, and I can only hope he returns to pen more scripts in the future.

Rating: 5 stars out of 5.

The Best Characters in A Song of Ice and Fire

George Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is popular for many reasons, but mostly for the amazing characters. After spending thousands of pages inside their heads, you feel like they're part of your family, and none can really be called protagonists or villains. Most are capable of vile treacheries one moment and tender mercies the next. But who are the best? Here are my ten favorites, in descending order.

1. Arya Stark. As far as I'm concerned, her journey has been the most arduous of the three wargs. She may not be a cripple like Bran, or battling undead armies like Jon, but she's been out of enough frying pans and into as many fires just trying to survive. And now that she's an assassin in training, I can't wait to see this little bad-ass released on Westeros when she graduates as a full-fledged Faceless One.

2. Tyrion Lannister. If Ned Stark's honor was his downfall as the King's Hand, then the dwarf's cunning is his salvation, even if it's short-lived when his father comes to town and runs him down. His mummer trial completely cements my adoration for him when he tells his sea of accusers that he wished he really had killed Joffrey, and indeed that he wished he had enough poison for them all. Here's another one (like Arya) who flees east and will surely return bearing vengeful gifts.

3. Aeron Greyjoy. The prophet-priest of the Drowned God is grim and cheerless in a very entertaining way -- I love his homiletical stings. He clearly has no intention of letting Euron keep his kingship, insisting that "captains raised Euron up, but the common folk will tear him down", but I could easily see Aeron bringing his godless brother down single-handedly. I'm not sure that Ironborn baptisms are for me, however, (being drowned and then having the sea water pounded out of you), as some don't survive the blessed ritual.

4. Samwell Tarly. A secret hero of mine, and how could he not be as Castle Black's librarian? He's actually the most courageous character of the series, precisely because he's such a coward. And let's face it, most of us are more like Samwell than we'd care to admit. Arya may be my #1 choice, but if I were thrown into the world of Westeros, I have no delusions that I'd be anything like her. I would behave like Ser Piggy -- cringe every time someone took out a sword and hide away in a room full of books. But what he does for Ghilly is precious, and his manipulation of Cotter Pyke and Denys Mallister brilliant.

5. Sandor Clegane. I have a soft spot in my heart for abused people with self-loathing issues, especially when they have a soft spot in turn for others. In the Hound's case, it's vulnerable girls. Though he has an impossible time showing it, he cares about Sansa and Arya, though he is capable of killing either given the right trigger. I love the way he's so contemptuous of everyone but himself, in the way only self-hating loners are, and it will be interesting to see what happens to him in solitude on the Quiet Isle.

6. Bran Stark. Paralyzed legs and a broken back do not a fun life make, and I can well sympathize with Bran's desire to lose himself in Summer completely. Crippled heroes are fairly unconventional, and you have to love a kid who's willing to be lugged around on the shoulders of a giant retard, and keep his chin up even further when his home and people are destroyed by treachery.

7. Olenna Tyrell. The tiny old shrew known as The Queen of Thorns is the most underrated character of the series. It's almost as if James Clavell wrote the chapter in which she and the Tyrell ladies question Sansa about the Joffrey; the hennish preliminaries are a riot. Olenna holds forth on the oafishness of men, slamming her ladies with dismissive rejoinders, interrupting everyone left and right. This woman's tongue is as lethal as Valyrian steel, and I'm not sure Aegon the Conqueror himself could have stood up to her. It's fitting that she's the one guilty of the regicide for which Tyrion is blamed. She only gets one full chapter, but a very memorable one.

8. Jaqen H'ghar. I'm going out on a limb with this guy, since his agenda is so unclear. He's bad and dangerous, no question, but quite colorful (literally and figuratively) and bound by the assassin's code of honor that compels him to murder people at Arya's whim after she saves his life. I love the way he takes to affectionately calling her an "evil child" after she outfoxes him (by requiring that he assassinate himself unless he helps subdue the garrison of Harrenhall), and I can't help suspect that these two are bound to hook up again at some point.

9. Jon Snow. A favorite of many readers, and after Ned Stark the character with the most integrity. He functions as the story's everyman (someone we easily identify with even when placed in extraordinary circumstances) and thus is a bit more traditional and less tasty than other characters on this list, but I do like the way he's able to rise to the challenge of being a double agent, and the endearing way he takes things to heart.

10. Daenerys Targaryen. Another fan favorite for obvious reasons, but as with Jon, not high on my list for being traditional in many ways (royal child in exile who comes into her own against the odds). But she has to make the cut for being the mother of dragons, after all, and for her heart, and for strong ideas about justice. I just wish she had a bit more of the Targaryen madness, though that could be on the way in the fifth volume.

The Curse of the Black Spot

The Curse of the Black Spot has a lot going for it, and a lot not, that it ends up feeling like one of the most disjointed episodes of the new series. On the plus side, it's a base under siege drama calling to mind a classic like The Horror of Fang Rock, and one of the best stories from the Russell Davies period, Midnight. For a while it harkens back to the Hinchcliffe era in terms of style, as a period piece with a distinct gothic horror feel, but then completely shifts in emphasis and tone to become an unremarkable morality lesson.

The regulars are on their usual form, with Amy in particular getting fun things to do, as she swashbuckles her way to save the Doctor from walking the plank. So amusing is this scene, and an obvious throw back to Tom Baker's Doctor, who frequently found himself in a hard way for appearing out of nowhere in the midst of suspicious tragedies. When he exasperatedly demands at gunpoint, "more laughter, guys", and the pirates begin chuckling at his imminent demise, it's hard not to do the same. The genius of this is that Amy doesn't know jack about sword-wielding, but doesn't have to, as it takes only a single drop of blood to make one prey for the Siren. All the pirates are genuinely terrified of her, as if she were lighting a match in a room full of gasoline.

The period feel to the story is effective as usual in Doctor Who, and the script exploits this by creating an air of mystery and intense claustrophobia, as the Doctor investigates how and why the Siren appears. Everything takes place at night and in grim isolation. The Doctor is a diligent but fallible sleuth, convincing us that water is the danger until it becomes clear that any reflective surface poses a threat. Indeed, his theories are repeatedly shown up wrong, to the extent that he has to tell people to "disregard all of his theories up to this point", which is grandly hilarious and a far cry from the all-knowing tenth Doctor. The Siren itself is well realized, with alternating sea green and fiery orange glows, depending on her ire. With a nautical demon picking off crew members one by one, all the ingredients necessary for a solid Who story are present; then, with 15 minutes remaining, everything changes.

Though the word isn't used, hyperspace is the punchline, this final act reminiscent of The Stones of Blood which saw the Doctor propelled away from druidical blood sacrifice and onto a spaceship where he had to play the lawyer to stop his execution. In The Curse of the Black Spot, blood is also at issue, but the shift to alternative space less satisfying, as we get a monster that simply isn't. The Siren is really an automated medical doctor that whisks people off at the first sign of injury in order to heal them, as benign as The Beast Below, with the result that (wait for it) everyone lives -- pirates, Toby, and Rory all. The draining away of suspense is compensated for to an extent by the intriguing locale, but at the same time, no one can accuse Stephen Thompson of being the most competent writer. It's not clear how the Doctor, Amy, and Captain Avery are able to wake up and roam freely aboard this spaceship while everyone else lies comatose and immobilized on tables. Nor do I buy the captain's turning from a greedy, murderous pirate to a concerned, responsible father. He cared more about hiding a jeweled crown than his son's life, and his sudden altruism is inexplicable. On top of this, we get Rory almost dying, and while this played well in the contexts of Amy's Choice and Cold Blood, it's by now a tiresome gimmick. It would be churlish to fault the "miracle day for everyone" theme too much, for as with The Beast Below, it is much the point, involving a misconstrued creature. But last year Moffat was able to milk a philosophical purpose out of his beast that mitigated the comedown of a non-villain, and the starwhale at least killed adults if not children.

Ultimately this story feels disjointed, and is saddled with a creature that doesn't deliver, but it does have features that on whole make it enjoyable.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Cynical about Philippians 3

Mark Nanos has written a sequel paper to the one on gentile dogs and hallucinating exegetes, and it's now up on his site. It's called "'Judaizers'? 'Pagan' Cults? Cynics?: Reconceptualizing the Concerns of Paul's Audience from the Polemics in Philippians 3:2, 18-19", and the pdf is here.

Mark continues to insist that Paul wasn't opposing Jewish rivals or customs in Philip 3, but rather local pagans and their influences. "In the face of competing non-Jewish pagan communal alternatives on offer in Philippi with which his (primarily if not exclusively) non-Jewish addressees are tempted to identify (seek status and goods), Paul seeks to persuade them to instead identify with Paul's Jewish norms because they are followers of Christ." I don't quite agree with this, but it's vintage Nanos, well worth reading, and I may comment more later.