Stephen R. Donaldson

Having pursued separate goals in support of loved ones in the magical reality known only as "The Land," Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery reunite and discover their true power in each other before considering a magical sacrifice to stop the Worm of the World's End.

The Last Dark

Cams Campbell

The idea of writing a review of the most important series of books I've read is rather daunting, so I'll just knock something out quickly to get over the scope of the thing. 

I don't know what it was about the last chronicles that kept me from reading it for so long. I've read the first and second chronicles multiple times over the years, starting around 1991-ish when I was 20. My wedding band is white gold. My blog is at sunbane.com. I'm a fan. 

So why did I only just finish the last chronicles today? Dunno. 

And it took me a Long Time. I started reading the first of the last in October 2015. Partly that's because I'm more of an audiobook guy and still can't get any TC chronicles in the UK, so it meant reading with my eyes. I don't do that so much now. 

Anyway, the book. Yeah. Damn. It's good. Yes there are sloggy bits and purple prose galore. And SRD hasn't reigned in his flowery vocab at all, has he? Maybe it's condign. I dunno. This is why I'm enjoying Stormlight Archive so much - heavy hitting fantasy and no dictionary required. And yes, towards the end of this book I did have to look up mansuetude again. The Chrome spell checker here doesn't care much for it either; it has a red squiggle. 

And some of the names of the giants really took me out the book, as if I were reading a SNL parody. 

But vocab and silly names aside, I say YES to this book and to the whole series. Sure, the final scene was a bit samey, but with enough of a punch to make me choke up a bit. In fact there were a few chokey-uppy moments. I found the ending 100% satisfying. 

And now I'm done, I feel like going back to the first of the last again and rereading them all. Maybe the One Tree as well, just to get the whole Elohim bit and the story of Kastenessen as told by Findail the Appointed on Starfare's Gem. 

I'm reading with my eyes a lot more these days and some of the history sections were rather dense. But they add so much to the first and second chronicles, particularly the whole Theomach storyline and the backstory of the Viles and the Demondim and the Colossus of the Fall.

The Last Dark

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