Against All Things Ending

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Book 3

De: Stephen R. Donaldson

Narrado por: Tim Gerard Reynolds

Award-winning author Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books have sold more than 10 million copies. In the third volume of this trilogy, Linden Avery confronts the consequences of using magical power sufficient to wake the Worm, which is capable of destroying the Land. And although the only hope may rest with Linden’s son, the boy could also bring disaster upon everyone.

©2010 Stephen R. Donaldson (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[A] writer of extraordinary power and imagination.” ( Booklist)

A fantastically well-read and enchanting story

The writer does an excellent job of captivating us and blowing our minds once again while the reader did a phenomenal job with voices and making each character unique. Well done

narrator

Disliked the new narrator. I like the old one that read the rest of the series.

Excellent character voices

I like this book even better than the others due to the narrator’s character voices. Sometimes Scott Brick reads like he is not paying attention to the storyline.

Great story, sketchy performance

What aspect of Tim Gerard Reynolds’s performance would you have changed?

Haruchai (especially Stave) sound like robot munchkins & the giants (especially Ironhand) sound like leprechauns.

Any additional comments?

Could use a do-over by Scott Brick.

Did Linden learn nothing in the previous trilogy?

I have stated previously that Donaldson is one of the yardsticks against which I measure all other writing. In many ways, his propensity for manipulating the English language is getting in the way of the story.

The main focus of three quarters of this book is the continued degeneration of Linden Avery's character. Her monomaniac charge to redeem her son has already doomed the Earth at the end of Fatal Revenant. She continues to ignore consequences and her indifference finally leads to the death of several companions. The story seems to tread water for the majority of the book, and only advances in the last two chapters.

The many seemingly insurmountable problems Linden and Covenant face continue to magnify. Without spoiling the specifics, the problems of Esmer and Joan are the only things that redeem this storyline from irrelevancy.

The specific problems of this novel are many. The biggest issue in my opinion is that this story seems to exist to jam every background note ever written by Donaldson into published form. In many ways, the previous novel as well as this one suffer from the same problems that doomed The Silmarillion. I am not saying that it is not interesting, but it can be done better. I refer to the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson expansions of Dune. Additionally, as stated in the headline, Linden Avery seems to have forgotten everything she learned during her previous sojourn with Covenant under the Sunbane. I found this highly distasteful, and I have to go all the way back to the 80s to Night and Fog (the 5th Cenotaph Road book) for such a sad evolution in character development.

My final objection to this work is that Donaldson's contortion of the language stabs him in the foot. His constant description of all magic as "theurgy," magic of divine origin, rather than "thaumaturgy," or general magic, as well as refering to an oversize sword as a glaive, a polearm consisting of a stick with a knife on the end, are the most obvious problems.

Finally, directly related to the audiobook and its performance, please do whatever is necessary to bring back Scott Brick for the last book. This reader speaks with a noticeable and distracting Irish accent. His only apparent ability at characterisation is to enhance this accent.

Amazing!

Stephen R. Donaldson is a literary genius. He has a way of creating worlds and characters that is unequaled.

Not as good as the original two series.

I really wanted to enjoy this series. I read the first ones 30 years ago and they were great at that stage of my life. I even had white gold in my wedding band. This entire series could probably have been condensed into one book as there is very little action and the same self-doubt is repeated often. The author continues with many archaic words. The new narrator was disappointing (even though he was phenomenal in the Ryeria series of books). I'm going to plow through to the end, but not expecting much. The author seems to have to add entirely new realms of power simply to justify writing this series and is constantly backtracking to cover for the multiple disparities which arose from this decision.

Magical Battles

My favorite review of Lord Fouls Bane witch is the first book in this series is a YouTube video about feminist view on Thomas Covenant. although it is a negative review in the strongest form it also perversely says everything that is right about this series. when the great anti heroes of fantasy literature tell scary stories to each other they tell Thomas Covenant stories, and with what's left of his leper's hand, (the hand of a rapist) he salutes them all with his middle finger. there is something here to offend almost everyone! this ninth book is in that great tradition. Elric, Conan and The Joker are afraid of the white gold weird wild magic of the one and only lonely leper messiah, Thomas Covenant ur-lord and unbeliever. if you think he should have killed himself in the first book (or worse!) that this series had never been published I hope you choke on it! ...see you in Malikai.-raw.atx

I am not against this story ending

Any additional comments?

I rated this higher than I truely think it should be from the totality of all the books. I was so excited to get into the book that I could overlook the long drawn out internal struggles. By the end of the book I couldn't wait for it to end but I am so heavily invested in the story that I can't wait for the last book either so that the story can finally be resolved. Please use more than 5 scenes in the next book so my imagination can wonder around "The Land" one last time.

Oh my gosh!!!

Nine books in and Linden makes it almost impossible to continue. What an insipid character. Great writing…. Oh my gosh what a horrible character