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Submitted by Andrew 
(Jul 10, 2007)

This series is by far the greatest fantasy series of my lifetime. And i arrived at reading it completely by accident. I went to my local library one day and found the first book in the series, Lord Foul's Bane, being sold for 25 cents. I had no clue what the series or the book was about. I picked it up out of curiosity. From the very first moment I began reading the book I could not put it down. Every page I read left me wanting for more.
The anti-hero of Thomas Covenant completely drew me into the book and the first series. When Thomas Covenant entered the land for the very first time I expected him to become the typical hero who shoots out of nowhere to save everything. I was completely wrong. Instead of embracing the health and vitalization of the Land he discarded it as a threat to the way he knew his life to be and himself to be. It was a threat to the life of leper which he had embraced as his only way to survive. The inner conflicts in Thomas Covenant alone are enough of a reason to read this series. He is unique in his actions and decisions. He regrets the power and responsibility thrust upon him instead of allowing it to take control of him.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever focus on Thomas Covenant's trials and tribulations in the Land which all lead up to the spectacular conclusion of the series. He grows menatally and learns that his greatest weakness has given him the strength to defeat the evil upon the Land.
Overall this series is a perfect exampe of how the main character of a story holds the key to it being successful. The attitude of loving to hate Covenant makes him unique in every sense of the word. He is the hero which you can neither accept or deny. Stephen R Donaldson has fashioned a series which ranks with the greatest fantasy novels of all time. I give this series my full recommendation.

At the end of the first book of his Gap series Donaldson writes an essay about his writing, the Gap series draws from Wagner's Ring Cycle, and it is quite visible in the Covenant books as well, though in different ways. Tolkien was not the first to write about an all powerful ring. Similarities with Wagner include the overall dark tone and the "overblown" writing style - although I think the latter, which Donaldson gets criticized for from time to time, works for him, especially in having a fantasy world subject to the unbelief of the main character. It is not appropriate to mimic Hemingway. Wagner's characters can also spend a lot of time talking about their motivations! And there is more one could say, but most of all Donaldson has his own grand concept, his own themes and with great courage does it his own way.
I started this series by picking up The Illearth War in a library, then switching back to the first book when I was already hooked, and Lord Foul's Bane is probably where Covenant is most likely to put people off reading further. Donaldson dares you to hate him and put the book down, if you keep reading it will be most likely that you stay because the overwhelming goodness of the other characters and the beauty of The Land is something you want to see justified.
Take a good look at The Land in Lord Foul's Bane, as you struggle to stay with Covenant, he enters a nearly perfect world, but things are never that good for anyone ever again. Donaldson, like the Despiser himself, kills off, tortures or casts into despair almost all of those you as a reader would find easier to like. The evil characters in this book take relish in the sufferings of others in a way that makes one feel there is something really at stake. This pays off for the reader when Covenant finally begins to turn.
Then in the second series, Covenant returns to The Land and it is already ruined when he gets there, and the manner of his former victory over evil is the reason why.
I have read these books many times since my teens, as I have LOTR. While Tolkien writes an epic of the struggle of good and evil, I think the core of his work, where his interest lies, is in the power of stories, histories and legends themselves and how they interact with the here and now of his characters, in a book written to read almost as if it could be a legend from our own past. Donaldson is more challenging on the issue of good and evil, all his characters must struggle within and without, and some fail, but unlike some fantasy authors who also blur the lines between good and ill, he believes in beauty, that there is something worth fighting for.

I was only 16 when I first read Donaldson's book Lord Foul's Bane. It was a first edition (I'm 43 now) and it literally changed my life. Up until then I'd been reading Dahl and Bloom or an occasional thriller: then I stumbled upon this at a Waldensbooks in California. I've read many books over the years (I'm 43) and have enjoyed a great many of them for various reasons, but The Chronicles of Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant brought to me the world of fantasy. And for that I shall be forever grateful.
The series isn't perhaps the best written, nor the most exciting, yet it remains an excellent example of how fantasy prose can express the noblest traits of humankind through the use of anthropomorphized beings such as we find inhabiting the Land. From the gentle and jovial Giants to the intransigent and dignified Harachi to the proud and beloved Ranyhyn, who amongst us were not moved to love these characters? Yes, Covenant is an anti-hero, capable of inflicting great harm and suffering in his own right, but as the people of the Land are willing to accept and forgive Covenants flaws, so shall I. Drama is conflict, and in Donaldson’s created Land we find this played out starkly and uncompromisingly; the classic good and evil opposition, with a bit of grey (Covenant) thrown in, which anyone who’s lived more than a few years knows is more like reality than fantasy. Lord Foul’s Bane, and the episodes that follow, are a fine example of the promise that the fantasy genre tries to attain. This series is one of the few I recommend for newbies to the genre. This to get them started into the world that has meant so much to me.

This series rocks. I'm only in ninth grade and it's a collage level series but i've been reading them for three years. All of donaldson's books that i've read rock and i've read all of Mordant's Need, Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and The Second chronicles of Thomas Covenant. For the first time since I first read Tolkien i was unable to put the book down. If you are looking for a good series start with Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

I completely agree with the previous two posts and many others in this review thread. I would add one nuance to the last review that in fact trumps any critisism of 'the ring' and the similarities between it and LOTR. In LOTR, the ring is at the center of everything. The ring is practically the lead entity in the film, arguably above even Frodo.

In the Covenant series, the talisman takes an immediate back seat to it's own composite. In other words, it's not really about the ring as much as it's all about the White Gold. This gives Donaldson's creations a powerful nuance that LOTR never even ventured into.

Like that overstock.com commercial...it's all about the gold...the white gold!

But again, I thought your comments were right on. And in fact Donaldson ingeniously gave his 'ring' a greater dimension than LOTR by giving it the depth and implication of it's own makeup to the lore of the land -- and eventually it's only hope.

Sure the one ring (LOTR) was all powerful in Middle Earth. But the cause and effect of it's own destruction with the demise of Sauron was always left highly ambiguous. Throw the ring in the fire, the mountain crumbles and the evil armies are somehow rendered harmless. Cue the sinkholes.

Compare that to the blinding crack of the wild magic when wielded (sorry) by it's otherwise wimpy owner. It stops just short of attacking the central nervous system. Of the reader.

And that Illearth Stone. That thing operates a lot faster than any corrupting power of middle earth's one ring. And the Staff of Life. This stuff was anti-matter reinvented.

By the way, the ravers...a lot scarier than the nazgul. And the nazgul were pretty scary, at least in the books. We'll see if the ravers are less scary on screen.