Stephen R. Donaldson

A sequel to The Runes of the Earth finds Linden Avery returning to the Land in search of her kidnapped mentally ill son, whom she discovers fully healed and at the side of her believed-dead beloved Thomas Covenant leading an attack on Revelstone. 100,000 first printing.

This thought-provoking sequel to 2004's The Runes of Earth opens with a bang. Watching from the battlements of Revelstone, a keep besieged by the power-hungry Demondim, battle-weary healer Linden Avery can see both Thomas Covenant and her son, Jeremiah, riding ahead of a wave of pursuers-even though Covenant, her former lover, is dead and mind-damaged Jeremiah has been captured by Lord Foul the Despiser. Odder still, both men treat her almost disparagingly when they reach the keep, forbidding her to touch them and showing no signs of affection. Soon it becomes clear that nothing is what it seems. Avery's fight to save the Land from Lord Foul will take her to the Land's past through the worst kind of betrayal and across its length, but the worst enemy she faces is her self-doubt. Difficult but worthwhile, this complicated and emotional continuation of the Thomas Covenant saga is exactly what Donaldson's fans have been hoping for. (Oct.)
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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

Stephen R. Donaldson is the author of six previous Covenant books: Lord Foul's Bane , The Illearth War , The Power That Preserves , The Wounded Land , The One Tree , and White Gold Wielder , as well as many other novels.