The second volume (after The Runes of the Earth, 2004) of the final Thomas Covenant tetralogy takes place entirely in the Land, to which Linden Avery has gone in search of her missing autistic son, whom she finds, completely cured and even outspokenly brash, in the company of a hale and hearty Thomas Covenant. The hitch, however, is that they now must find a hidden store of Earthpower, after which Linden may have to choose between using it to return herself and her companions to Earth, health, and happiness or to save the Land from its enemies. Donaldson maintains his propensity for forcing his female characters to jump through flaming hoops, but here the women are more modest, at least physically. Linden's dilemmas and choices are less athletic and more of the ethical variety. Should saving her son, now of sound though rebellious mind, override her duties to the still direly periled Land? The time it takes her, with some counsel from Thomas, to reach a compromise solution and to attempt to carry it out involves much pace-slowing angst, even if it further develops Linden's status as the new saga's real protagonist. The ending is the kind of cliff-hanger that should have readers returning to see how it and the remaining adventures play out. Green, Roland
I'm not sure what I think of that. One of the most jarring and novel things about Runes of the Earth was that Linden Avery really seemed to have her head together. That set her apart from virtually every other protagonist Donaldson's ever written; and it was both refreshing and humorous to see her shrug off Lord Foul's manipulations by simply refusing to listen to him.
From the sound of it, she's going back into a slough of self-doubt and angst. Which could be really annoying; though I doubt that she'll get anywhere near Covenant's exasperating qualities in the first trilogy.
But of course all this is vapor. There's nothing to do but wait, read, and see.
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