In 1977, epic fantasy of any kind seemed novel. The Lord of the Rings had established the blueprint over the preceding two decades, though the book-buying public was yet to be deluged with the host of imitators that constitute the vast majority of the genre’s output today. It was in that year that Stephen Donaldson’s first book, Lord Foul’s Bane was published – a novel which from the off was clearly quite unlike any of the other epic fantasies pushed onto the market by publishers keen to capitalise on Tolkien’s popularity. Lord Foul’s Bane introduced Thomas Covenant, an author afflicted with leprosy who finds himself transported to ‘the Land’, a magical realm of which he seems destined to be saviour yet which he does not even believe really exists. In this first instalment of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – wherein the titular character is seen to commit rape inside the first hundred pages – the difference between Donaldson and his contemporaries is immediately apparent.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant proved remarkably popular with the public and even earned plaudits from such austere voices as the Times, then largely dismissive of fantasy. A sequel trilogy, The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant followed, further deepening the complex mysteries surrounding ‘the Land’ and the leper saviour of the title before Donaldson left this world and moved on to a number of other, equally well-received series. Key amongst these is The Gap Cycle, an epic re-telling of Wagner’s The Ring Cycle set in space. In 2004, Donaldson returned to the character of Thomas Covenant, with the publication off The Runes of the Earth, the first book of an eventual four in that saga’s concluding series.

8 OF THE BEST

Stephen Donaldson is renowned for his complex, multi-volume sagas such as The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and The Gap Cycle. Like any such series, these are probably best read in their entirety, in order, but that isn’t to say there aren’t a few individual highpoints along the way worthy of mention in their own right. Here Death Ray picks eight of them…

1. Lord Foul’s Bane
1977

Stephenson’s debut novel introduced what remains his most famous creation – Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Lord Foul’s Bane possesses all the hallmarks of so much other epic fantasy – the eponymous Lord Foul is an ancient evil returning to threaten the well-being of ‘the Land’ after an absence of many centuries, while Covenant himself is a prophesied, though somewhat reluctant saviour – but in truth the book is quite unlike anything else the genre has to offer and mercifully free of any of epic fantasy’s well-worn clichés.

Covenant is a leper and the Land of which he is destined to be saviour is a place he considers to be nothing more than a dream concocted by his fractured mind as it labours under the stress of isolation that his status as an outcast brings with it. As ‘the Unbeliever’, Covenant sees his actions in the Land as almost entirely without consequence and via this premise are difficult questions of responsibility examined.

The depiction of Covenant’s leprosy is vivid, providing stark illustration of the awful psychological effects of a disease more often described in the purely physical terms of the gruesome and the grotesque. That Donaldson conceived his most famous character as a youth in India, where his missionary father worked as a doctor in a leper colony, is perhaps no surprise.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant on Amazon

So, we begin with Morn Hyland the helpless victim – the damsel in distress – captured by the space pirate Angus Thermopyle and implanted with a device which allows Thermopyle complete control of her. Morn’s apparent rescuer – another pirate, Nick Succorso – is in fact a rather nastier piece of work than Thermopyle, and so are the roles slowly reversed with Morn herself eventually bringing Thermopyle to justice by framing him, becoming a hero of sorts and Thermopyle the victim.

Of course, what such permutations really serve to highlight is the sometimes inadequacy of such archetypes in good storytelling – it’s not really a question of who the hero and who the villain, but more a question of whether heroes and villains really exist at all. The answer, as with most of Donaldson’s work, is complex.

The Real Story on Amazon

3. The Mirror of Her Dreams
1986

This first volume of Mordant’s Need is rather lighter than much of Donaldson’s work, a fairytale of sorts, though many of its themes echo those of the earlier Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Terisa Morgan is a young woman with a comfortable, but ultimately meaningless, life leaves – a fact which leaves her questioning her own existence and leads her to fill her apartment with mirrors, seeking reassurance from the sight of her own image. Mirrors, however, ultimately provide Terisa with much more than that…

In the land of Mordant, mirrors are the key to all magic, and Terisa is transported there by an ‘imager’ or magician who believes her to be a powerful sorceress. There she finds, though, that most imagers believe those things summoned from mirrors to be mere creations, magical constructs which did not exist at all prior to their summoning. Thus is Terisa’s ‘real life’, her real world existence, doubted by many of those she meets in Mordant, a fact which, paradoxically, slowly enables Terisa herself to become certain of it.

The theme of unbelief, in common with that evidenced in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is immediately apparent, though the questions posed by it are rather different. Terisa’s doubts are not of the kind that lead her to spurn responsibility or disregard the consequences of her actions; rather, Terisa’s doubts are the source of crippling inaction – if you don’t know what is real, how can you know what you should do? Indeed, why do anything at all?

Mordant’s Need, which is completed by the second volume in the series, A Man Rides Through, is perhaps free of some of the unrelenting darkness of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but is in its depth and complexity every way its equal.

Mordant’s Need Bane on Amazon

4. Daughter of Regals and Other Tales
1984

Published shortly after the release of the final volume in The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, this collection of short stories represents Donaldson’s first foray into fantasy realms other than ‘the Land’ (though one story here, Gilden-Fire, does revisit the setting of the earlier Chronicles, in the form of an ‘outtake’ from The Illearth War).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the short stories here are not numerous, numbering only eight in total. Two complete novellas are included, alongside short stories on such diverse subjects as a guardian angel whose mortal charge appears intent on selling his soul, a librarian’s gradual change in a future where violence has been eradicated by eliminating the causes of fear and a cyborg investigator out to uncover strange goings on at a future game park, paid for by the government as entertainment in a vastly overpopulated future. Most interestingly, The Conqueror Worm (originally the title of an Edgar Allan Poe poem, alluded to by H. P. Lovecraft in Shadows Over Innsmouth and also borrowed by Mike Mignola for the fifth of his Hellboy graphic novels) is, unusually for Donaldson, a horror tale, though perhaps a rather atypical one – the source of creeping terror is, in fact, a single centipede.

With so many successful epics to his name, Donaldson is not always noted for his short stories; this collection shows them at least worthy of consideration.

The Daughter of Regals & Other Tales on Amazon

5. The Power That Preserves
1979 (1977 in the US)

Concluding a trilogy is always a difficult business. There is not only the challenge of producing a volume capable of standing on its own merits and concluding the story as a whole, but also of ensuring that the great mass of plot strands inevitably left over from earlier books are properly resolved. A great many authors fail at this, either leaving so many strands unresolved as to make sequels, prequels and spin-offs seemingly inevitable (and, indeed, making the original trilogy unreadable without them) or else tying everything together so tightly – so unbelievably – that the final book becomes little more than a series of preposterous coincidences, convenient encounters and hastily assembled endings. Donaldson avoids all these many pitfalls and while two sequel trilogies did indeed follow, it is not at the expense of the tale here.

Here we find a Covenant changed by his experiences in the Land, but still entirely uncertain what to believe. In poor health and with leprosy once again threatening his life, he returns to the Land, and it is here that he is ultimately presented with a choice – remain in the Land (a place which Covenant still doubts even exists, let us not forget) in full health, or return to his life in the real world with all the risks that will bring. The question really, of course, is rather more universal than that – how much can our decisions be based on certain understanding of the consequences, and how much remains to be decided on belief alone? It’s an unanswerable question, but one here expertly examined.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant on Amazon

6. The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die
1996

Donaldson’s Gap Cycle concludes with This Day All Gods Die. Perhaps of all the Gap books, it is this which is most immediately recognisable as the retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle that Donaldson always intended the series to be. The book’s title echoes Götterdämmerung, the concluding opera of Wagner’s work, which translates roughly as ‘The Twilight of the Gods’ (itself based upon the Ragnarok of Norse mythology), and here more so than elsewhere in the series are direct parallels visible in the unfolding plot.

Morn Hyland remains central to events though, as before, perhaps in an unwitting or unwilling manner. The Amnion, a race of aliens bereft of great military or economic might but possessed of an unrivalled mastery over genetic engineering, have by skilful manipulation come to threaten human space and Morn, caught up in events thanks to her earlier misfortunes, is pivotal to mankind’s chances of defeating them.

The Gap Cycle ends as it began, with the truth proving to be somewhat the opposite of what it has long appeared. Apparent misfortunes prove to be the machinations of powerful individuals, deliberately placing in harm’s way those whom they believe capable of responding with even greater deeds – like gods testing mortals. Even for those mortals who pass the test the rewards are, as we might by now expect of Donaldson’s work, somewhat debatable in their merit.

This Day All Gods Die on Amazon

7. The Wounded Land
1980

The Wounded Land was published just three years after the original Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a swift return to what had itself been a lengthy and substantial trilogy. Donaldson says now that he wishes he had waited before beginning The Second Chronicles, a task which he clearly sees as somewhat more ambitious and deserving of attention than its predecessor, but the truth is that The Wounded Land lacks nothing for all its author’s apparent haste in penning it.

The Wounded Land introduces Linden Avery, a character not universally popular amongst Donaldson’s readers, though ultimately crucial to the story of Thomas Covenant. Avery is a doctor sent to check up on the still reclusive, though rather more sanguine, Covenant. Covenant himself has enjoyed several years of continuing success as a writer, his muse returned, his psyche restored by lessons learned in the Land during The First Chronicles, though all this now appears at risk following the return of his estranged wife, Joan. Joan is apparently in the thrall of Lord Foul, an interesting addendum to the question of the Land’s reality or otherwise, and when, amidst this confusion, Covenant is returned to the Land, Linden Avery is taken there with him.

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant remain a very satisfying, self-contained tale, but for everything that comes after The Wounded Land is the real beginning and for that reason is most definitely essential reading – and for that reason, also, Linden Avery’s role, love her or hate her, is just as important.

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant on Amazon

8. The Man Who Killed His Brother
(as Reed Stephens)
1980

Stephen Donaldon’s first foray beyond The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was in fact a move away from fantasy altogether. The Man Who Killed His Brother, the first of four books (known as The Man Who… books) to feature Private Investigator Mick ‘Brew’ Axbrewder, is instead a somewhat pulpy detective novel.

There is not a hint of fantasy or science fiction in this book, though Donaldson’s insistence that all his intervening work, The Man Who… books included, was intended to develop his own abilities as a writer ahead of attempting to tackle The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (see main interview) seems borne out by the characteristically complex cast on show here amidst what is otherwise unremarkable premise. As well as being a PI, Brew is also an alcoholic, and The Man Who Killed His Brother of the title is not, as might be expected, the target of Brew’s erratic investigations, but rather it is Brew himself, responsible for the accidental death of his policeman brother.

Originally published under the pseudonym Reed Stephens (a modification of the author’s first and middle names – Stephen Reeder Donaldson), this book shares little in way of subject with Donaldson’s more famous work; in terms of theme and style, however, it shares a great deal and may perhaps be of interest on those grounds alone.

The Man Who Killed His Brother on Amazon

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Other Links: Stephen Donaldson’s Website | Death Ray Magazine