The Power That Preserves (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #3)

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The Power That Preserves (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever #3)

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 11,824 ratings · 149 reviews

"A trilogy of remarkable scope and sophistication."
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Twice before Thomas Covenant had been summoned to the strange other-world where magic worked. Twice before he had been forced to join with the Lords of Revelstone in their war against Lord Foul, the ancient enemy of the Land. Now he was back. This time the Lords of Revelstone were desperate. Without hope,...more

Mass Market Paperback, 512 pages

Published October 12th 1987 by Del Rey (first published 1977)

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Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin

Best Fantasy of the 70s

21st out of 54 books — 50 voters

The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The Best Epic Fantasy

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Jul 21, 2007 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another series I did in one long weekend, this was probably one of the most influential series I read during high school. For some reason I absolutely hated the main character Thomas Conevenant (probably because he was an ass) and my one driving passion was to keep reading until he was killed off. Until of course the last book in the second series where I got over it and decided he should live and then he was killed off.

As an interesting aside, this series made it remarkably less likely that I...more

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May 18, 2013 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

*For anyone reading my reviews, this is a cut-paste of my review of Lord Foul's Bane. I will write a separate review for the Second Chronicles, but for each of the first series, I will use the same review. Thanks*

Tolkien was not my introduction to fantasy fiction (neither was Donaldson); my first experience with SFF was RA Salvatore's The Crystal Shard. However, I immediately jumped into Tolkien, and afterward, Donaldson.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are as different from Tolkien's world as...more

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May 11, 2013 Jason Olson rated it 5 of 5 stars

The final book in the first chronicles of Thomas Covenant. If you disliked the 1st and 2nd book, then this will not win you over. But you would have to ask yourself... why am I still reading this? Do you really hate it that much? Maybe it's just that the main character is not letting you vicariously live through him for some romping high fantasy adventure.

Anyway, I have never read anything by Donaldson that I didn't like. The gap, mordant's need, and his short stories always draw me in. But I w...more The final book in the first chronicles of Thomas Covenant. If you disliked the 1st and 2nd book, then this will not win you over. But you would have to ask yourself... why am I still reading this? Do you really hate it that much? Maybe it's just that the main character is not letting you vicariously live through him for some romping high fantasy adventure.

Anyway, I have never read anything by Donaldson that I didn't like. The gap, mordant's need, and his short stories always draw me in. But I wouldn't give the gap 5 stars, and I wouldn't give Mordant's need 5 stars. But I do give 5 stars to the 1st three TC books.

For me, the land is my favorite fantasy world yet. The land itself has a soul that I haven't found in another book. The place is alive, and its people are connected to it in a way that we only wish we could be here on earth. Even when I hated Thomas Covenant, I wanted to know what happened to the land and the other characters. The fact that TC eventually becomes bearable made me enjoy the series that much more, and in this book he is at his most bearable yet. He's almost heroic! Which is nice, because I like to vicariously live through the characters in the books I read too.

My "reviews" seem to be more like random thoughts in a blog, I am trying to stay away from spoilers and still talk about the book. (Mostly I'm killing time, I don't really expect anyone to read this) but anyway... onward!

Saltheart Foamfollower, perhaps my favorite character in any book, returns for a great deal of the book, and it's awesome. But even he has demons he is fighting inside himself. His hardships have changed him. Also, we see Lena and Triock again, and the toll Thomas Covenant has taken on their lives. Donaldson does not allow TC to put his past behind him, in fact, it haunts him through the entire series. Some people have said what TC did is unforgivable, and I think that is the point. You are not supposed to forgive him. It is part of who he is, and he is spared none of the consequences. (Except perhaps some jail time). His actions lead to Elena, who breaks the law of death, to the slaughtering of the Ranyhyn, who TC sends to visit Lena to atone for what he has done. His violent act serves the despiser, and damages everyone involved.

I have never cringed so much in a book as I have with this series. TC literally makes me cringe over and over throughout. I truly despise the guy sometimes. Mostly because the people he is surrounded by are so deserving of respect, and the land so worthy of defending. I cringed when he attacked Lena, I cringed when Atarian and Triock caught up with him, I cringed when he met Trell again, I cringed at the way he spoke to the lords and the bloodgaurd. I did alot of cringing!

But in the end, the journey is totally worth it. The way this book ends really caps off the series. And I can see why Donaldson had never planned to write anymore at the time. The series is complete after the 3rd book, TC is not supposed to be forgiven, but he has come a long way towards being a better person. 5 stars because I have read this series over and over since I was a little kid and always enjoy it.

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May 02, 2013 Martin Adil-Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

The final part of the first Thomas Covenant trilogy does not disappoint.

In this installment, the consequences of Covenant's action are laid bare. There is betrayal, peril, a looming evil, a reprieve only for the vilain to comeback stronger before the final inevitable battle.

Having the majority of the setup in the first two books (and you really should not read this without reading the first two), the writing is beautiful, the action non-stop, and the reading is compulsive.

The first two books eac...more The final part of the first Thomas Covenant trilogy does not disappoint.

In this installment, the consequences of Covenant's action are laid bare. There is betrayal, peril, a looming evil, a reprieve only for the vilain to comeback stronger before the final inevitable battle.

Having the majority of the setup in the first two books (and you really should not read this without reading the first two), the writing is beautiful, the action non-stop, and the reading is compulsive.

The first two books each took me ten days to read - I read this in four. I could not stop turning pages as I HAD to find out what happened.

All of that aside, I have two quibbles - the first is a pretty bigger plot hole and the second is a plot device.

**SPOILER WARNING**

1) In "The Illearth war", Elena is destroyed when she summons the spirit of Kevin Landwaster who turns against her for breaking the Law of Death. This is fine. However, in "The Power That Preserves", Lord Foul resurrects Elena to serve him, and does so through the power of The Staff of Law. The problem is that in "The Illearth War", Elena was wielding The Staff of Law when Kevin turned on her. So the staff either controls the dead, or it does not. You can't have it both ways.

2) I struggled with the ending of "The Power..."
I have a personal thing against writers who employ Deus Ex Machina style endings. It is cheap bad writing. Whilst "The Power..." is by no means the worst offender I have ever come across, the arrival and interaction with The Creator was wholly unnecessary. Further, the arrival of The Creator causes so many paradox's that the structure of the stories almost breaks down.
The Creator has formed The Land. He is forbidden from interferring with events as to do so would break The Arch of Time which would undo all of existence, and release Lord Foul and the Raver back into heaven.
Yet, despite this, The Creator is stable able to reach down and heal Covenant with out breaking this law... I'm pretty sure that is a foul!

Those two points aside, this is a wonderful book and, on the whole, a worthy end to the first trilogy. I'm sure that Tolkein would be proud.(less)

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Mar 09, 2013 Brian Schwartz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Donaldson’s CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER is hailed as one of the great fantasy works of all time. What sets it apart from most fantasy literature is how it sets itself apart from Tolkien’s work.

Too many writers rely on Tolkien’s framework for a story. The heroes are all heroic. The mystical magical items are readily employed. The journeys from place to place are long and there is always the ultimate villain to slay.

Donaldson’s hero, such as he is, is the antithesis of Tolkien’s h...more Donaldson’s CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER is hailed as one of the great fantasy works of all time. What sets it apart from most fantasy literature is how it sets itself apart from Tolkien’s work.

Too many writers rely on Tolkien’s framework for a story. The heroes are all heroic. The mystical magical items are readily employed. The journeys from place to place are long and there is always the ultimate villain to slay.

Donaldson’s hero, such as he is, is the antithesis of Tolkien’s hobbits. The reader loathes him because he is a self-pitying, whining, coward – and a rapist. He has no courage, no core values except his leper’s rules of survival. Conjuring Thomas Covenant and making the reader root for him is an accomplishment that puts Donaldson at the pinnacle of fantasy character creators.

The other primary character in Covenant’s trilogy is the Land. Tolkien had Middle Earth, but it was Middle Earth’s inhabitants we loved. Donaldson’s characters were not inhabitants; they were servants of the Land. The Land was the beginning and end of their purpose. From that purpose flowed power, unlike most fantasy literature where magic and power flow from a conjuring being.

Finally, Donaldson writes a well plotted, well paced STORY. Never are we in one place too long. Never are the characters too ponderous or given to overlong philosophical debate. The story stands well against any told in fantasy literature.

Unfortunately, that would change in later novels added to the Covenant story where characters do almost nothing but ponder and philosophize.

I have to admit, Foul’s demise reminded me just a little of that horrible Star Trek episode, Day of the Dove, when the Enterprise crew and the Klingons who have invaded all drive out an alien life force by laughing at it. It’s not quite that foolish because Donaldson has set it up nicely. All through the trilogy, joy is center of all the characters’ lives. They live to bring joy to each other. They find joy in their service to the Land and the earthpower that flows from the Land brings them joy. It is not improper, therefore, for joy to be the ultimate weapon deployed against their tormentor.

Donaldson’s trilogy was well received at the time. Liner notes praising the story come from legends of fantasy and science fiction such as Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. That is high praise indeed.

Few books have brought me as much pleasure as these. I don’t recall exactly how many times I’ve read the first trilogy, but it has been at least five and familiarity with the story has not reduced the joy of taking in Donaldson’s fantastic story told with astounding prose. (less)

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Mar 04, 2012 Mark Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the conclusion to the first book of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Though I enjoyed the first two, even now, thinking back on it more than thirty years later, I believe this book was magnificent. Donaldson is able to weave wisdom and sheer humanity into the story with such intensity that I had a love/hate relationship with Covenant and the story the whole way through, but I still had it finished in five days.
In this story, Covenant is brought back to the Land, but thi...more

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Jul 28, 2009 Gabriel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Most of what I wrote in my review for The Illearth War holds true in this one too. I will say that, after just one book of seeing Thomas Covenant dilly dally and do nothing (well, relatively nothing in the second book), it was exciting to see him use his "unbelief" as a way to take action. It's like getting the final act of Hamlet, even if the main character is slightly less likable than Hamlet.

Whether or not you enjoy the final chapter depends on the type of person you are, no doubt. I felt it...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Mark Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a magnificent conclusion to this trilogy. Donaldson, a cynical leper, accustomed to his incurable disease, for the third time is taken to this land where healing has been possible, but now it is not. This time, Lord Foul the Despiser, has the land in his grip of evil control that is gradually destroying beauty and blasting hope. As the holder of a mighty talisman, capable of destroying the Despiser, Covenant is impelled toward a confrontation with the Lord of Evil, even though he does no...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Columbine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In this, the third and final book of the Illearth War series, Donaldson (enervated beyond all reckoning, but yet with a gargantuan exertion whose puissance he could not attribute) (or something like that) pries his gaze out of his navel, stops trying to use plot to expostulate an impenetrable personal philosophy, and actually puts the storyline front and center. It's as Dire and Grim and Fraught with Self-Inflicted Misery as the other two books, but reads as legitimate fantasy, with the conflict...more

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Sep 01, 2012 M. J. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I had read the first two and was going to read something else for variety before picking up the third, but then decided that this was not fair to the author. He had created this as a trilogy, and as I reached the low point that ended the second book I realized that I should read it as he intended, to see what the third book does from there.

There are interesting twists in the third book that ought to challenge Covenant's perception that it is all a dream. The biggest is that he is not fully heale...more I had read the first two and was going to read something else for variety before picking up the third, but then decided that this was not fair to the author. He had created this as a trilogy, and as I reached the low point that ended the second book I realized that I should read it as he intended, to see what the third book does from there.

There are interesting twists in the third book that ought to challenge Covenant's perception that it is all a dream. The biggest is that he is not fully healed of his leprosy and does not regain the ability to "see health" that he had in the first two books. One of his supporting pillars for his unbelief was precisely that leprosy could not be cured, and here it never was, even when a healer cured much else that was wrong with him. Also, he discovers that he can resist being summoned, but he cannot cause someone to summon him.

Throughout, Covenant has wrestled with the notion that people die because of him--and not just that those about whom he cares, those who have befriended him, suffer, but that he causes the deaths of innumerable creatures of evil. It is that aspect that he does not want to be the cause of death for creatures of evil that distinguishes him from so many standard fantasy heroes, but ultimately it gives the books a clever climax in which he finds a way to defeat the principle lord of evil without killing him.

The book also ties together many points from the previous books, in that his previous actions have consequences years later (there is a seven-year gap in the fantasy world, although it is a very short time in his own). Again we become privy to knowledge of events he could never know, and thus the world is more real to us than it is to him. It is a bit uncomfortable that he perfects a type of doublethink, in which he firmly believes that the Land is not real, and at the same time that it and its people matter; we would have liked for him to decide one way or another, but in the end this was the only answer that would work for him.

It is also clear from the beginning that the character is not a coward, nor selfish, but is willing to take risks with his own life to save someone else, even a stranger. This sets a different tone to the book, clarifying the central issue: Covenant is not a pacifist because of being a coward, but because of concern for the condition of others.

Stylistically, the vocabulary of the book was intriguing; the author used many words, some of them repeatedly, with which I was unfamiliar, almost as if he had done a dictionary search for unusual words and wanted to use them in sentences to reinforce his understanding of them. Generally the meaning was deducible from the context, but there were a number of times I wished that I had a dictionary handy while I was reading, and I have come away with several words whose meanings I do not know but which I now recognize as familiar. On the other hand, at least once I had the clear impression that he was misusing an unusual word that I did know, so that calls into some question the others.

I am mildly curious as to what he might do in future installments, but those have not been provided to me and there are other books awaiting my attention, so I will set aside that curiosity for the present.(less)

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Jan 20, 2009 Derek rated it 5 of 5 stars

Dark throughout, but uplifting in the end, and moreso because of the journey we have taken. I will always love Mr. Donaldson's use of language, and now that I am old enough to comprehend Thomas Covenant, I can truly appreciate the depth and beauty of his characters as well as his world.

If you have not read this series yet, please be forewarned that it is not a light and fluffy read. Do not plan on reading 10 pages a night as you get ready for sleep. All these books deserve your undivided attenti...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Sebastien rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fan de Dark Fantasy et de Anti-Héros

Recommended to Sebastien by: Internet

Shelves: dark-fantasy

Tant qu'à être rendu à la fin je me suis dit pourquoi pas embarquer tout suite dans le bain. Les deux premiers étaient quand même très bon, si on arrive à passer par dessus le caractère d'enfoiré du personnage principale. Alors un dernier livre et j'aurai fini la trilogie.

Soyez prêt car le livre commence très mal (pas mauvais, mais ça chie royalement) et le mood est carrément noir. Lord Bane est presque invincible et personne n'est assez fort pour l'arrêter sauf le porteur de l'Or Blanc soit Tho...more Tant qu'à être rendu à la fin je me suis dit pourquoi pas embarquer tout suite dans le bain. Les deux premiers étaient quand même très bon, si on arrive à passer par dessus le caractère d'enfoiré du personnage principale. Alors un dernier livre et j'aurai fini la trilogie.

Soyez prêt car le livre commence très mal (pas mauvais, mais ça chie royalement) et le mood est carrément noir. Lord Bane est presque invincible et personne n'est assez fort pour l'arrêter sauf le porteur de l'Or Blanc soit Thomas Covenant. Voyant ce préambule je me suis dit, ce roman va finir en queue de poisson, car Thomas Covenant est trop un trou de cul pour essayer quoi que ce soit.

He bien, détrompé vous. Comme dit l'expression, poussé au pied du mur, même une sourie attaquera le chat. Cette fois-ci Thomas Covenant est poussé au pied du mur et n'a pas le choix d'agir sinon le mal va gagner. Donc notre anti-héros tant détester décide qu'il doit faire quelque chose. Quoi, il ne le sait pas mais il va au moins faire la chose qu'il n'a jamais fait de sa vie: essayer.

Je dois encore dire que c'est ce troisième roman qui m'a donner envie de donner une seconde chance à cette série et de me jurer de la relire en entier un jour pour la lire avec le bon état d'esprit et savoir à quoi m'attendre. Je suis sûr que cette fois là je vais vraiment apprécier ce roman à sa juste valeur.

Ce n'est pas le meilleur roman de mon existence, mais c'est tout de même un roman digne d'être lu et d'être classé parmis les grand classique de la Fantasy. Achetez le en e-book si vous ne voulez pas investir trop, pour moi ce cadeau restera un bel ajout à ma collection de roman.

N.B.: Il existe 2 autre chroniques de Thomas Covenant. Semble-t-il qu'elle sont aussi bonne, sinon même meilleur que la première. La raison pourquoi je ne les ai pas encore lu c'est qu'en m'informant sur ces trilogies/quadrilogies je me suis fait donner un punch majeur sur Wikipedia (je maudis les enfoiré d'innocents qui annoncent pas les spoiler quand y font leur critiques et quand ils font des page wiki). Donc si vous êtes intéresser à les lire, n'allez pas chercher d'info sur les roman et surtout ne lisez pas les critiques. Vous ne scraperez pas votre fun ainsi.
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Mar 23, 2013 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great ending to a very interesting series. Thomas Covenant is a genius creation! So unexpected. You never know whether to admire him or despise him. Really cool ending, and cool how it ties things together. The other characters are also complex and interesting.

As for whether I would recommend this series...it is fascinating, but I want to just give the warning that Thomas Covenant is fond of a couple curse words that he repeatedly uses, and there is an incident that happens in the first book, t...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Zane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

This review is for the trilogy as a whole, and may contain conceptual spoilers (but events will not be talked about).

The novels may seem dark and depressing, but Donaldson has weaved a remarkable alternate world that bears only passing similarities to generic high fantasy in Tolkien's vein.

The inner and outer conflicts surrounding Thomas Covenant, the protagonist, are engaging and thought-provoking. By being a leper, he has to deny the validity of a magical world he falls in love with in order t...more

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Apr 01, 2009 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 14, 2010 D-day rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 100-mod-fant-list

'The Power That Preserves' is the last book in the first 'Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'. Covenant returns to the land after a few days in the real world where is health and state of mind have deteriorated considerably. When he returns to the Land he finds that seven years have passed and the Land is in dire straits as Lord Foul has besieged the Lords at Revelstone and the Land is permanently in winter.
This is the best of the first trilogy as the various threads are brought togeth...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Roy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Donaldson could have done so much better if he had stopped spending so many many many pages telling us the same sentence over and over again:

"He fell forward, could not take another step. He wanted to die rather than keep on walking. Then he took another step and kept on walking"

That is the essence of the three first books about Thomas covenant. This story should have been compressed to a single volume, that could make the actually interesting parts worth the read. As it is now I regret having s...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Amber Harris rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

After a long period of waiting for something to happen, I finally find myself liking a book in this trilogy. It took until the middle of the book, granted, but then I flew right through it. The pace picked up, the characters gained interest. It was good, but I'm sad that it was so long coming. However, saying that, I must emphasize again that Donaldson's style is a much vaguer, slower-paced style than I prefer to start with, so those who like that type of writing style will have probably liked t...more

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May 24, 2010 Surreysmum rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1984, fantasy-fiction

[These notes were made in 1984:]. In this, the last of the Covenant series proper, the Unbeliever achieves what appears to be a final victory over Despite [i.e. roughly self-hate:], not through any sort of absolute certainties but by invoking his own doubts and fears about the nature of his being. In the process, he loses his best friend, Saltheart Foamfollower the giant, and he does it by embracing, not fleeing, the objective correlative of his inner evil, the green-glowing Illearth Stone. Ther...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Ken Baumbach rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Covenant set of series is a bit of a conundrum.

Pros: Vivid fantasy land with wondrous scenery and (usually) rich, compelling story.

Cons: The protagonists are hard to care about. Thomas Covenant is crazed most of the time and Linden Avery, well, let's just say she needs to be slapped upside the head. Donaldson tends use too many $10 words that throw the reader out of the story. He also tends to beat us over the head with emotion. Okay, we get that Linden is upset. We don't really need to wall...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

Also read in the dim past...

In this book, the vacuum of action in "The Ilearth War" comes to an end and battles are fought, choices are made, and our hero becomes the hero. Many ends are made ship-shape and the story arc was resolved to a reasonable state. Hence the return of the 4th star.

Since at the time this was where the story ended, I thought it was a pretty good way to wrap things up. I wasn't expecting Thomas Covenant to re-appear in the future.

(At least when Donaldson started up again, h...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Dan Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

read my review for "Lord Foul's Bane" it's the 1st book of the serious, i wrote it for the series in general

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Nov 03, 2009 g026r rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

An interesting premise, but Donaldson's word-craft, though improved drastically from the initial Lord Foul's Bane, still remains not quite up to the task of giving the story its proper treatment. The notable overuse of certain favourite words is particularly irritating; if I never encounter "inchoate" and "preternatural" again, I will die a happy man.

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Oct 09, 2010 Vomithatsteve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Holy carp! This one starts of really bleak! All of the poor decisions and bad things that happened in the first two, just kind of snowball into this one.

It's pretty depressing, but in a good way. I had trouble putting this one down.

I've said before that the first book in this trilogy borrowed all the worst parts of Tolkien: the random poetry, hippies, etc. This one borrows all the best parts: magic battles between ancient powers, an awesome Sam-esque sidekick, etc.

The first book was a bit of a c...more

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Nov 11, 2012 David Sullivan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked up Lord Foul's Bane, the first book of the first Thomas Covenant series, while trying to recover from my first divorce. At first, the atmosphere seemed unpleasant. But the more that I read on, I came to realize that the image being portrayed strongly resembled my own life. I read on... and on... and became so totally absorbed in the book that I quickly found Stephen R. Donaldson's style and imagery to be something that I strongly related with. Within a matter of months I completed all s...more

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May 25, 2010 Letterswitch rated it 5 of 5 stars

Book #3; ...mixed feelings about this series. I wish the trilogy had been compressed into one book, with more interplay between "The Land" and our real world...like King's Talisman...but, beggars can't be choosers. The main character kept things interesting through occasional tedious passages. The ending was a little too Eddie Valiant vs. the Weasels to move me...and, the author does not share Tolkien's talent for making people care how far and through what landscapes hungry people walk. That be...more

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May 08, 2013 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Based on my experience of the two previous books in this trilogy, I wasn't expecting to love this book. But right from the off it grabbed me in a way the others haven't. You're thrown right in there and the pace doesn't let up for the whole rest of the book. I devoured the last about 150 pages, eager to see the resolution of everything that had happened up until that point. Thomas Covenenant even went some small ways to redeeming himself in my eyes, and it was nice to see a little more heroism f...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Robert Day rated it 4 of 5 stars

I seem to remember this being a dark and depressing fantasy about someone transposed from the world as we know it, where he has a corrosive medical condition, to another world or dimension or mad dream where he makes very slow and torturous progress towards completing a quest or saving the world or something like that. Six books I read like this (2 trilogies) and guess what - I've bought the first book of the third trilogy.

I'll probably read through this trilogy too thinking the same thing as be...more

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Jun 16, 2008 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is the last in a strange and interesting trilogy. It is really a compelling read, in part because the plot has an element of mystery to it; there is some sense that things are not as they seem and that until the main character figures out what's really going on he will not be able to solve the problems he needs to solve. The trilogy as a whole features several really unusual characters and a backstory that, especially coming as they did in the late seventies, seem to be startlingly ori...more

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May 01, 2008 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Indeed, to some degree Thomas Covenant is a whiner, as one reviewer put it. It's in his nature. Having been briefly famous, a celebrity, then suddenly his world turns upside down as he develops leprosy - his wife leaves him taking their son, no one wants him to come into town, people pay for food and power so that he won't be TEMPTED even to come into town; people trash his property to try and force him to leave, he has, really, NOTHING to hope for, and even his attempts to be treated civilly fa...more

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About Stephen R. Donaldson

Stephen Reeder Donaldson is an American fantasy, science fiction and mystery novelist. He earned his bachelor's degree from The College of Wooster and master's degree from Kent State University. He currently resides in New Mexico.

Stephen R. Donaldson was born on the 13th May 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, James, was a medical missionary and his mother, Ruth, a prosthetist (a person skilled i...more

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Books by Stephen R. Donaldson

Lord Foul's Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #1)

The Illearth War (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #2)

The Wounded Land (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #1)

White Gold Wielder (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #3)

The One Tree (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #2)

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avg rating	preview: The Power That Preserves Goodreads rating: 3.96 (11824 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/687215.The_Power_That_Preserves?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348904452l/687215.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/687215.The_Power_That_Preserves?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson[/url]

The Power That Preserves (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever #3)

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