The Wounded Land

by Stephen R. Donaldson

Other authorsDarrell K. Sweet (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 1981

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Del Rey / Ballantine / SFBC (1981), Edition: book club, 492 pages

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. Thriller. HTML:??Wounded Land is . . . a deeper, richer world than that presented in the previous volumes. . . . [Stephen R.] Donaldson is extending himself, creating a fuller, more mature world of imagination.???Seattle Post-Intelligencer Four thousand years have passed since Covenant first freed the Land from the devastating grip of Lord Foul and his minions. The monstrous force of Evil has regained its power, once again warping the very fabric and balance of the Land. Armed with his stunning white gold, wild magic, Covenant must battle not only terrifying external forces but his own capacity for despair and devastation. His quest to save the Land from ultimate ruin is exciting and heroic

User reviews

LibraryThing member heidilove
i think this series is best read before one can drive. after that, it only goes downhill.
LibraryThing member Rivendell
I really don't like Donaldson .... Too much clenching. But this gets reviewed for its disability content. This is (along with Anne McCaffrey's Ship series) one of the few speculative fiction forays into disability (the hero - term used loosely) has leprosy.
LibraryThing member www.snigel.nu
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is somewhat more fantastic, but yet retains the gravity of the first three books. I liked it as much as the first, but for somewhat different reasons.
LibraryThing member Karlstar
Covenant returns to the land many years after this last visit, and it is seriously changed. He believes now, but the challenges of the land are even greater.
I really enjoyed this book and the following books. Compared to the first trilogy, Covenant's task seems even more impossible, as improbable
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as that seems. Like the first series, this isn't so much about one superhero, but how one man can get a lot of help doing what seems impossible.
Well written as always.
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LibraryThing member egb
Have you ever returned to a wonderful fantasy-world in a second trilogy just to be dreadfully disappointed? In this book Thomas Covenant returns to the Land after ten years of our time to find it changed beyond recognition.

Possibly this book is unique in that Donaldson almost systematically takes
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apart the whole setting of the first three books and leaves both the reader and Covenant himself reeling from shock to shock.

Eventually Covenant manages to visit most of the important places which he visits in the first book (Lord Fouls Bane), nearly all of which has been corrupted by the so named Lord Foul during the time Covenant has been gone from the Land. (Time moves differently in the Land and Covenant has been gone about 4000 years.)

Eventually Covenant and his companion Linden Avery flee the wounded land and we get a small glimmer of hope when they meet a group of questing giants.

This is probably the weakest book of the second trilogy, and at the very least it is the one I like the least of all the six books. Mostly this is because it is unrelentingly bleak, but there is also very little that happens in it except that Covenant and his companions try to travel through the Land and a lot of things happen that needs to be dealt with later.

The reason I give it five stars is that the whole series definitely deserves five stars and it is impossible to see this book, or for that matter any of the books of the second trilogy, as separate from each other.
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LibraryThing member jveezer
In the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, ten years have passed for Covenant on our earth. When he is summoned back to The Land thousands of years have passed and his deeds have become the stuff of myth and legend while the land has changed dramatically. This trilogy is even darker than the
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First Chronicles and both of the primary protagonists, Covenant and Linden Avery, definitely qualify as anti-heroes. The Land itself has been twisted into a malevelant caricature of its former healthy self. It is really interesting to watch the character of Linden and her relationship with Covenant slowly develop as the books move along.

In The Wounded Land Linden and Covenant seek out the cause of the sickness in The Land. Covenant has lost all the Earth-Sense and healing benefits he had on his last sojourn here. Linden, on the other hand, has the Earth-Sense so acutely that she is sickened and overwhelmed by the suffering of The Land and its inhabitants.
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LibraryThing member lisacronista
I bought this book not knowing it was the beginning of a second trilogy, not the first. That was a good mistake because this ended up being my favorite of all six. This is Thomas Covenant's second trip to The Land, and the once beautiful terrain is now scorched and ugly. His treacherous journey
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with Linden Avery is tense as Lord Foul attempts to thwart them. Their traveling companion, a small black creature named Vain, is as deadly as he is key to saving The Land. It's a bit violent at times but satisfying.
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LibraryThing member janoorani24
This is an unrelentingly bleak and dismal fantasy quest story in which not much happens, but just about every gloomy and despairing adjective in the English language is used repeatedly, and the characters are subjected to great horrors and almost die more than once.

I first read both of the Covenant
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Chronicles in the 80s while living in Alaska. I was an immature reader and thought these were good at the time. Re-reading the first book of the second series (there are two series of three books each) showed me the error of my ways. This is a depressing book, and I don't know when, if ever I might re-read the others. The author's overuse of archaic adjectives is really annoying. Not recommended.
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LibraryThing member eheinlen
This book was horrible and depressing. While it might have had its redeeming points, I couldn't get past the his raping of the woman in the beginning of the book. I don't care if he's a leper and can now feel his lower region. This story was horrible and should be avoided at all costs.
LibraryThing member Scribble.Orca
I struggled with the black mood of this series, although I found the world building and characters kept me involved.
LibraryThing member sisyphist
Easily one of the worst books I've ever read.
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
One of the things one should watch for while reading, to tell whether or not one is perusing literature rather than entertainment, is character development. Mr. Donaldson hasn't bothered to move Thomas Covenant to a different head-space than the one inhabited by the misanthrope explored in the
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first three novels. That being said, we come to the matter of entertainment value. Thomas covenant is not entertaining, and while the world constructed by Donaldson in the first three volumes is complicated, it is neither intriguingly complex, nor attractive to me. I haven't read anything by Stephen since, nor felt the desire to.
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LibraryThing member MathewBridle
Having enjoyed the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant so much I could not resist diving straight into the second. Within a few pages you soon discover that this chronicles has been written as single story instead of three connected ones. How so? Well, this book does not come to a satisfying
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conclusion as all three previous did. There is a significant event near to the end of the book but it is not conclusive – no closure.
Thomas Covenant is still rages against himself while still learning to control his wild magic. Now though he does display moments of power that are capable of sundering the earth wide open. Through events in his own world he now has a travelling companion who has ‘issues’ of her own not too dissimilar at root to Covenant’s own.
The Wounded Land then, is in reality one seriously long prologue without which the rest of the chronicles would actually collapse into mediocrity. I say this because at the time of writing this review I am well into the next part and enjoying more because of the lengthy intro. There is a lot more subtly to the story’s deeper reaches.
The Land itself is a ruin of its former glory which tears at the heart of Thomas Covenant driving him to restore that land that he feels responsible for destroying. A vile and corrupted sun keeps the under its bane shifting between ravenous forms. The fierce heat that desecrates: the verdant sun that enforces wild growth, and the pestilent sun the withers life to a diseased pulp. Revelstone is in the hands of a Raver feeding the Sunbane with the blood of the people.
Covenant knows that the only hope is to restore the Law, to do that he will need to re-make the Staff of Law and thus the quest is born. A quest that will take him from one side of the land to the other and back again until at last he reaches the sea and ship-full of giants seeking to cure the ill of the earth.
So, as you can see there is a lot to get through in a single book, so fittingly, Stephen Donaldson does not try to cram it all in. Instead he spreads it out over a whole saga and digs deep into the psyche of Covenant, Linden, and a whole host of giants.
In short I found this book to be the best so far, not because of the story but because of its expanding detail and greater depth.
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Language

Original publication date

1980

Physical description

492 p.; 8.3 inches

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