Lord Foul's Bane - Stephen R. Donaldson

   1977; 474 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Book 1 (out of 10) in the series “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”, and Book 1 (out of 3) in the subseries “The First Chronicles”.  Genres : Epic Fantasy.  Overall Rating: 5*/10.

    There’s no other explanation for it – this has to be a dream.

    That’s the logical conclusion Thomas Covenant comes to about the strange new world he suddenly finds himself in.  For one thing, he’s painfully aware (literally) that he suffers from the most terrifying disease of all – leprosy.  Yet in this new world, he seems to be magically on the way to recovery.

    For another thing, there’s a couple of nasty people – and we use that term loosely – that he meets who want to charge him with a task: deliver a message of doom to a bunch of people he’s never met and has no idea where they dwell.  Ah well, at least this is going to be an exciting dream.

    Of course, a skeptic may question the duration of this “dream”: it seems to go on for days on end.  But Thomas has an explanation for that – the last thing he remembers in the “real world” was stepping out in front of a speeding police car.  Maybe he’s in a coma and dreaming.

    But the clincher for the dream hypothesis is a song-singing, tale-telling muscles-rippling guy named Saltheart Foamfollower.  Who stands out in a crowd.  Literally.  He's twelve feet tall.

    You don’t see many twelve-foot humans walking around in the real world.

What’s To Like...

    Lord Foul’s Bane is the opening book in Stephen R. Donaldson’s ten-volume Epic Fantasy series called “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”.  The series is further divided into three trilogies, with the final one actually having a fourth book in it.

    If you like your protagonists to be anti-heroic (and I do), Thomas Covenant is your kind of guy.  He’s rude to everyone, is quick to anger, wallows self-pity, and shouldn’t be left alone with young girls.  I’m hard-pressed to recall a less-likable protagonist than this, and I'm going to presume that he gets nobler as the series progresses.

    If you loved Lord of the Rings, and are searching for something similar, this is also your answer.  Dwarves and Elves abound (although they go by different names); there’s a “Ring of Power”; a perilous journey to Rivendell, (oops, I mean “Revelstone”), a Gollum equivalent; the Mirkwood Forest becomes the Morinmoss Forest; Mount Doom becomes Mount Thunder, and wearing the ring while baddies are nearby may be hazardous to your finger.  All that’s missing is some hobbits and Tom Bombadil.  Rest assured however, the way everything gets resolved here is markedly different from LOTR.

    As would be expected, there are a bunch of storylines to follow.  To wit:

    a.) Just how “real” is Thomas’s fantasy land?

    b.) Is he really Berek Halfhand reincarnated?

    c.) Why is the moon incarnadine (see below)?

    d.) What is “wrong” with the land?

    e.) Will Thomas live to deliver his message?

Another half-dozen or so plot threads spring up along the way, but this is a spoiler-free review.

    The text is a vocabularian’s delight.  The moon isn’t red, it’s incarnadine.  A face isn’t ugly, it’s roynish.  If you don’t like fifty-cent words used where a five-cent one would do, this can get tedious, but I thought it was done well.  A couple of my favorites are listed below, and there were dozens more.  I also liked the brief mention of synesthesia on page 24: “sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre.”

    There’s a tremendously-useful Glossary in the back.  Bookmark it, you will be referring to it a lot.  There’s also a map in the front, although in my mass-market paperback it was kind of blurry.  The chapters are moderately long, averaging just under 20 pages each.  There’s a fair amount of cussing, but the choice of words is limited to variations of “hell” and “damn”, which overall are pretty tame.

    The ending is exciting and spread over about a hundred pages, and I consider that a plus.  Some good guys die; some bad guys don’t, and there's a neat twist in the epilogue that I never saw coming.  Very few of the storylines listed above are tied up, but hey, this is just the start of a ten-book series, and the main aims of the quest place upon our heroes here do get resolved.

Kewlest New Word ...

Roynish (adj., archaic) : mangy, scabby.

Others: Carious (adj.); Eyot (n.); Demesne (n.); Benighted (adj.).

Excerpts...

    “I did not know that it is your custom to make strangers prisoner.”

    The man who held the torch stepped forward and bowed seriously.  “When we are sure, we will ask your pardon.  Until that time, you must come with me to a place where you may be examined.  We have seen strange tokens, and see more now.”  He nodded at Covenant.  “We would make no mistake, either in trust or in doubt.  Will you accompany me?”

    “Very well,” Atiaran sighed.  “But you would not be treated so in Mithil Stonedown.”

    The man replied, “Let the Stonedownors taste our troubles before they despise our caution.”  (pg. 134)

    Foamfollower’s question caught him wandering.  “Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?”

    Absently, he replied, “I was, once.”

    “And you gave it up?  Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me.  But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt.  How do you live?”  (…)

    “I live.”

    “Another?” Foamfollower returned.  “In two words, a story sadder than the first.  Say no more – with one word you will make me weep.”  (pg. 182)

“All you need to avid despair is irremediable stupidity or unlimited stubbornness.”  (pg. 386 )

    Sadly, there is much to quibble about in Lord Foul’s Bane.  The descriptions of the lands are long and numerous, the storyline’s pacing is incredibly slow, and while there is some fighting and intrigue in the first half of the book, Thomas doesn’t get pulled into the action until around page 300.  That’s a long time to wait for your protagonist to get involved.

    Foamfollower’s songs and tales are plentiful and “meh”.  I winced at a couple of typos (thing/think – page 93; spent/spend – page 94), I don’t expect such slips by a publisher such as Del Rey.  And as much as like anti-heroes, Thomas Covenant is just despicable.  Finally, the less said about the sexual assault scene, the better.

    I’ve been looking forward to reading something by this author for quite some time, and I have to admit, I came away disappointed.  According to Wikipedia, this was Stephen R. Donaldson first published book, so maybe it’s just a “diamond in the rough” and things improve hereafter.  It will be interesting to see if the thrills-&-spills and pacing pick up as the series progresses.

    5 Stars.  The last one hundred pages are very good, and make up for a lot of the plodding the reader has to do to get to it.  But a lot of readers are going to give up long before then.