Rating: 
Summary: A contradiction... but also a good book
Review: "Lord Foul's Bane," the first book in the chronicles of Thomas Covenant, is certainly a unique fantasy novel. When the title character, Covenant, a self-tormented leper from our world, is seemingly run down by an emergency vehicle, he wakes up in an alien world quite simply (and unimaginatively) called the Land. Here, the very earth is a living thing, worshipped and befriended by its enigmatic inhabitants. They hail Covenant as their possible savior (or destroyer), for he bears a striking resemblance to a hero of olde who ultimately failed to save the Land from the unholy touch of Lord Foul the Despiser - and this "Dark Lord" has returned to lay waste to the Land once and for all.Parallels to Tolkien abound, though author Stephen Donaldson certainly manages to bring something... else, for lack of a better word, to a story that might have been standard fare. Forget the magic ring that is at the heart of the story. Forget the Mount Doom (here called Mount Thunder) that harbors a Gollum clone slowly being ravaged by his lust for a powerful artifact. Forget the Treebeard archetype (here a giant called Foamfollower), and the sentient forests that recall memories of Tolkien's Old Forest and its Huorn inhabitants. Forget all of these things, because despite them Donaldson actually manages to create a fairly original world that is suitably foreign for all its beauty. On top of that, Covenant is the anti-Tolkien personality who will show all of these things to the reader. Covenant is not a very likable person. He loathes and pities himself, and whines more often than he acts. He even goes so far as to rape an adolescent girl who saves his life early on in the novel. He justifies his abhorrent actions by holding to a stubborn belief that the Land and all its people are nothing but figments of his imagination, and therefore he is not morally responsible for any of the wrongs that he does. He sticks to these beliefs long after they become implausible, and a result he feels rather implausible himself. Despite this, he's certainly an interesting anti-hero, and one cannot help but wonder how he'll react in the face of great peril. His persona gives this novel an edge few fantasy novels have - but coming to accept Covenant as the lead is ultimately a great challenge, and certainly takes some getting used to. If there's any reason to recommend the Thomas Covenant books, it's the Land. This creation is breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative, and quite allegorical in many ways. It's a haunting place, and the evil that threatens it is certainly a bleak force that you cannot help but loathe. Despite the glaringly awful title hung upon the novel's villain, Lord Foul is a scary figure, and you quickly come to believe that he is the very icon of evil, and that he will not rest until the Land, and all its beauty, is erased forever. "Lord Foul's Bane" starts out just right - it sets the mood and compels you to turn the pages. A short while later, things slow to a crawl, and don't pick up again until near the end of the novel. You scarcely get to know any of the novel's secondary characters, and care for even fewer of them. Even so, the novel finally builds to a satisfying climax - though it leaves many unanswered questions. Strikingly unique but also recognizably familiar, "Lord Foul's Bane" is a bit of a contradiction - just like its protagonist. Its uneven pacing, sometimes awkward prose, and lack of character development keep me from hailing it as a classic, but it's wildly different in its tone than virtually anything else on the market. A good book, and a good start to a dark fantasy series. If you like your protagonists clean, pure, and heroic, though, look elsewhere for your escapist fix. If, however, you can believe in the Unbeliever, then you'll crave more.
Rating: 
Summary: worst book I've ever read
Review: Ok, even if from all the other reviews of this book I am supposed to accept the main characters faults because he is "only human", how am I supposed to relate (as a human) to a leper (they still exist??) who hates everyone around him, and RAPES SOMEONES DAUGHTER THAT HE JUST MET WITHIN THE FIRST 100 PAGES OF THE BOOK!?!?!?!?
I'm sorry but there is only so much I can forgive a main character who is supposed to be the hero of the entire series. That, coupled with the incredibly hard to read dialogue and this is the absolute worst book I have ever read!!
As some other reviewers have said here, AVOID AT ALL COSTS!
Rating: 
Summary: Haiku Review
Review: Hard character in
A beautifully crafted Land.
Adult Fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Not terrible, not good either
Review: When I first read this series, I was fascinated... but I was also a teenager. I just tried to re-read it (over a decade later), and I couldn't get past the first third of the book: it all sounded contrived and shallow - how could I ever like this stuff? Well, it's still better than Eddings and it was entertaining once, but don't expect too much from it!
Rating:
Summary: New series in the works!!
Review: Donaldson's "Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" is in the works. It's due out later this year or early 2005. Details are on kevinswatch.com but they've not been updated lately.
This is a highly imaginative series and I would not pay much heed to the reviewer who didn't even finish the book. I am in the middle of book four (book one of the second chronicles) for the fourth time and I connect with these books in a strange way. Yes they can be frustrating and/or depressing at times but the hero is human, we must accept shortcomings in him. For one who fears power and also lack of power, his heart is ultimately with The Land. I love these stories and decided to read them every year. (Think what you will) The Land is a wonderful place worth the reverence and devotion the inhabitants show for it. If only we as a race could begin to approximate that level of respect for our own land, we might learn something about ourselves. The Bloodguard, ur-viles, Nom, Vain, Mhoram, Foamfollower, the Ravers: these stories have beautiful and unique characters that I would love to have known, or avoided.
Two more bits of advice: read with a dictionary handy and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Read Donaldson or drill a hole in my head? Tough choice.
Review: This was agony to read. Really, this was one of the worst books I have ever picked up. The sentences sit on the page like dog poo on your lawn. It is the most forced and laboured prose I've ever experienced. The idea is fine, and in the hands of a competent writer would have made a decent book. But in the hands of Donaldson it is painful. It creates as much interest as reading company tax legislation. Avoid at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing, Imaginative, Brilliant
Review: When Thomas Covenant contracted a disfiguring disease, his whole world changed. If he were to get hurt or bruised in any way he could pass-out. In the novel Lord Fouls Bane, Thomas Covenant is mixed between two worlds. In the fantasy world Covenant is called the Unbeliever. Throughout the whole story there is so much description, emotion, life, and fantasy.
When Thomas Covenant was infected with Leprosy his whole worlds and life around him changed. His own wife and child left him because of the disease. He had to begin going to a Leprosarium where he had tests done and began a sort of rehab. When he got home from the Leprosarium he had to move everything around so that he could not get hurt by anything. If he did he could pass-out or risk getting injured even more. He was in the Leprosarium to also begin executing VSEs or Visual Surveillance of Extremities. In the novel Covenant transfers between two worlds when he passes-out of conscious he wakes up in a different land where he is considered a savior to the people because of the white gold ring, which his wife gave him for their engagement. In the story Thomas Covenant struggles to grasp the meaning of his being in both lands.
The novel Lord Fouls Bane is an imaginative and very creative. One reason why it is such an imaginative book is because the author, Stephen R. Donaldson of traveling between dimensions in a very creative way. Also the author made the book very creative and it is brilliant the way he is so descriptive in all of the creatures and lands. It would not have been such a great if it were not written with so much description that Donaldson gives. The novel is such a fantasy because it has millions of other creatures and worlds.
Without a doubt Stephen R. Donaldson brings a brilliant imaginative book into your mind, it brings a new idea into your imagination. People that have read Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien will be astonished by this novel written by Stephen R. Donaldson's imaginative series, about a man who struggles with his reality.
Rating: 
Summary: Suprisingly disappointing
Review: Not having picked up a fantasy book in awhile, I had a hankerin' for a good epic, and picked Donaldson's book based on the reviews given here (and elsewhere). My hopes were high, and sad to say they never were met. In fact, this is one of the few books I actually stopped reading before the end. Ok, it wasn't THAT bad, but after expecting a Tolkien-like adventure, the reality was sorely lacking. Instead of trying to explain my disappointment, I've decided to write a snippet of dialogue that would not be out of place in this book:
Lord Halftoe Ravenhair: Good sir, we beseech thee in our time of need, when foul schemes threaten to extirpate our arcadian existence!
Covenant: Grrr
Arrowbend Makeweather: Thou must eliminate the abhorrent menace, likest thou did to my daughter's chastity!
Covenant: This is a dream!
Lord Griffonstock: The hellion is upon us! Help us now!
Covenant: I AM A LEPER!!!!
Giant WaterLogger: Well met my friend, HAHAHA!You get the idea...so did I, after about 200 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fine Example of Psychological Fantasy
Review: A great example of psychological fantasy illustrating the effects of disease, isolation and social ostracism in a marvelously depicted character-focused fantasy novel. The main character, Thomas Covenant, is the pivotal figure of the plot. Initially, he has it all: a happy marriage and a loving family, a successful writing career, and the confidence he had his life in his hands, until he is diagnosed with leprosy. Scared of the disease, his wife takes his son away and divorces him; society shuns him and doctors draw gloomy pictures of his new life. Left alone and forced to live the disillusioned and rigid life of an outcast, he makes it the sole purpose of his life to survive, thus refusing to believe and hope for a better life. Thus, when magically transformed into The Land, a fantasy world where everything is ultimately good and yields immense healing powers, Covenant discards it as a wicked trick of his mind and engages in all sorts of questionable actions that build a character we can understand, even if we don't like him. Covenant's wedding band, a ring of white gold is perceived by the locals to have extraordinary powers, and he himself is believed to be the reincarnation of a mythical hero who came back to save them from the imminent threat of evil devouring the world, embodied by the omnipresent Lord Foul, a wicked but powerful representation of Satan. Covenant thus finds himself caught in a battle he does not understand, but in which he is rendered a reluctant hero. The stubborn perseverance, with which he keeps denying life, his internal struggles, the deep sense of guilt and responsibility coupled with his survival instinct, provide a detailed account of the emotional and psychological state of a social outcast and build a moving story of a man who struggles to preserve what he considers to be his only sound part'his sanity. Overall, the book is a profoundly engaging reading. The only shortcoming that I see are the long descriptive paragraphs that sometimes tended to get on my nerves, and this is what made me give this book four stars. The author is sometimes straying into unnecessary detail, while in general the setting required to describe Covenant's emotional struggles is only sketchy. Yet, despite being somewhat overloaded, the setting is of significant importance to the overall effect of the book exactly because it is so absurd. In an ordinary setting the novel would probably fail to support an entirely psychological reading, but in Donaldson's imaginary world it turns into a great fantasy work that bears enormous significance'educational, moral, and social. I would recommend it to anybody who has interest in the fantasy genre. Give it a try and the time to understand it'it's well worth it and you certainly won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Hazards of Peace
Review: This is a different fantasy adventure from the usual Tolkien rip-offs that fail to break any new ground in the genre. Written by a conscientious objector to the Vietnam conflict in 1977, only two years after the fall of Saigon, Donaldson's world is very different from the innumerable fantasy series that followed. How different? First, the hero -- a self-pitying wretch who has sunk into the depths of despair after contracting leprosy and cast out as a pariah from the small town that had previously lauded him as a great citizen when he had been a famous author. Thomas Covenant believes Donaldson's fantasy world, The Land, is a dream and only begins to awaken after raping the woman who rescued him and (temporarily) cured his leprosy. Covenant is unable to control his previously suppressed emotions once he regains physical feeling (losing the physical numbness that was symptomatic of his leprosy) and only becomes somewhat sympathetic as he comes to accept that he can feel -- in all its meanings. Second, The Land. Portrayed as almost a living thing with people as gardeners and tenders of all that grows and forms therein. The Land, west of Lord Foul's domains, is a type of Eden where the people can sing to the wood and stone to receive its bounties -- in large degree the anthropomorphization of the environmentalist ideal. Third, the Oath of Peace. This is the most important theme of this book that few other reviewers have touched upon -- the pacifism and unpreparedness of the Land's inhabitants for the destruction that would follow. The Land knew peace because the sparsely settled human communities did not make war on each other and the world's nastier creatures slinked around in their own areas and did not interact. The Land is unable to respond to the unification of the cavewights and ur-viles (the nasty buggers) by Drool Rockworm without Covenant's help because the people of the Land lost the ability to conceive of and define evil. Thus, Donaldson's lesson that a loss of such vigilance should never occur because unknown evils may always arise. This is the set-up book for the series and can be quite slow at times. The rewards are at the end as Covenant begins to display some honor and concern about the world around him, which is much bigger than the world inside that has eaten away at his humanity, and some sharp action sequences. Books two and three are stronger, but this is a solid start to a fantasy series with intellectual dimensions, gritty and tragic war sequences and some tremendous feats of heroism undertaken FOR the hero, not by him.
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