The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #161047   Message #3834363
Posted By: keberoxu
23-Jan-17 - 04:30 PM
Thread Name: BS: It's Official: Janie is Old Geezerette
Subject: RE: BS: It's Official: Janie is Old Geezerette
Janie, if you have a moment nowadays to catch up on reading:
before you started this thread, posts were exchanged about Stephen Donaldson's fantasy series with the title character Thomas Covenant.
You stated that as those final four books came out, you started the first one and kind of stalled out. I can understand why, seeing as that is the first book in the series from which Thomas Covenant is absent.
If the first six books, as you have said elsewhere, were worthwhile reads for you, then you have a couple of options, now that the series is concluded.

You could go back where you left off and try again.

Or you could crack open one of the last three books and see what's in there.
Because the ongoing series took so long to write and publish, the later books in the series have detailed "What Has Gone Before" prologues to refresh your memory about the opening six volumes and all.

My personal suggestion, take it or leave it, is:
if you don't want to pick up "The Runes of the Earth" (book seven) again and resume where you left off,
then try "Against All Things Ending" (2010, Putnam). It's book nine. When the book (not the prologue) opens, Linden Avery and Thomas Covenant have just been reunited, after a lengthy separation, in "the Land" as opposed to waking-reality Earth where Covenant had been killed. Covenant is present but rather out of it as he has just been pulled out of a sort of timeless dimension, so he has to pull himself together and remember who he is and what is going on. It's an interesting narrative choice, because in his thinking Covenant has to recapitulate and recall; and you can see plot lines being neatly woven together and loose ends tied up.

Regardless, the conclusion is a satisfying one (book ten) -- I strongly recommend that you look at the series' conclusion sooner or later.
(My local library branches have these last books in circulation, don't know how the libraries are your way.) By all means, enjoy.