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the Thomas Covenant books [message #114260] Tue, 17 September 2013 15:20
dts is currently offline  dts
Messages: 7
Registered: July 2013
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Message-ID: <57@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 17:32:30 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.57
Posted: Thu Jan 24 17:32:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Jan-85 06:44:39 EST
References: <192@ttidca.UUCP> <3309@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: dts@gitpyr.UUCP (Danny Sharpe)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Lines: 38

In article <3309@alice.UUCP> alb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) writes:
>...
>...He [Donaldson]
>said he hadn't even planned to do the second trilogy, but that
>the first sold so well and he got so much mail in support of them
>that Del Rey pursuaded him.


I figured as much. I liked the first three very, very much. But I feel
there wasn't three books worth of material in the second trilogy. It
would have been better as a single book. Much better. Most of the events
in _The_Wounded_Land_ and _The_One_Tree_ had absolutely no bearing
on the plot. And most of the words were just filler, there to take up
space. I estimate that, if you leave out the unnecessary words, he had
a book and a half, maybe two, of actual events. And that could easily
have been cut down to a single book because not that many events actually
had a bearing on events further on. All the traveling around and visiting
the ancient peoples mentioned in the first trilogy could have been left
out and the story wouldn't have suffered. What few dependencies there
were could have been resolved differently.

I won't go into my criticisms of the first Chronicles. They weren't
exactly perfect, but they were good enough in some people's eyes that
Donaldson could take a good idea for a fourth book, blow it up into a
whole trilogy, and sell it. I hope he doesn't write a third trilogy.
If he does I probably won't read it.

Or put it this way: if _The_Lord_of_the_Rings_ is a fine silk necktie
then the first _Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant_the_Unbeliever_ is a
cotton handkerchief and the second Chronicles is a bird cage liner.


-- Either Argle-Bargle IV or someone else. --

Danny Sharpe
School of ICS
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts
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