false 3 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jun 17 15:44:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 16:01:04 -0700 2009 umpteen
In the second volume our (anti-)hero finds himself drawn back against his will to The Land as the unwilling last hope in the desperate battle against Lord Foul and his army. But he's still convinced it's all a delusion, a manifestation of his self-hatred and fervent desires for a life without leprosy, so he pretty much stands by while lots of terrible stuff happens to all the nice people who only really want him to help them out.

It gets a bit more complicated as he starts making deals with his own subconscious to assuage the guilt he feels because of his inaction, but then of course in true angsty Donaldson style, this only triggers even more guilt and self-hatred.

I did a bit of reading of criticism about these books before starting this volume, and it was interesting to bring the interpretations they offered to this reading. I think the biggest theme Donaldson addresses here is the question of whether pacifism or inaction or passive resistance or whatever you want to call it is effective in situations where the people you're opposing are willing to bring the violence down on your head regardless.

There's some pretty horrific stuff going on - the good guys lose a lot of battles and are subjected to some graphically described slaughter, particularly the scenes where the entire population of the city of giants is murdered one by one by a demon who has possessed a young giant. The way the giants are murdered is intense - the demon passes his hand right into their heads, clenches his fist and bursts their skulls from the inside. Full on.

Apparently Donaldson was using his hero's inactive, nonviolent stance to consider the effectiveness and validity of the protest movement in the USA during the Vietnam war, and I can see how that could work.

It's a series that's open to a lot of intellectual interpretation, not only because of the above, but also because our hero, rather than being a physically active warrior type, tends to sit back and intellectually grapple with the morality and logic of the fantastic situations he's faced with, and then tries to find a solution that way. His intellectual revelations are often what drives the narratives direction, in the same way that a physical victory in "traditional" fantasy does.

So yeah. A good read, even though it's a bit purple (but that seems to work with the subject at hand) with lots of meaty stuff to chew on with your brain-teeth.]]>