Against All Things Ending: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

Stephen R. Donaldson

Book 9 of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

Language: English

Publisher: Penguin

Published: Oct 19, 2010

Description:

The New York Times bestseller is "a fascinating fantasy" (Midwest Book Review).

Thomas Covenant is alive again, restored to his mortal body by Linden Avery's magic-a defiant act of love that has unleashed unimaginable power capable of devastating the Land. The only hope to stop this may lie with the mysterious boy Jeremiah, Linden's adopted son, whose secrets are only beginning to come to light...

From Publishers Weekly

The unreservedly emo penultimate installment in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (after 2007's Fatal Revenant) follows Linden Avery as she struggles to rescue her adopted son, Jeremiah, from the Despiser and forestall the Worm at the World's End, which she awoke by yanking her love, Covenant, free of the Arch of Time. While an introductory plot summary does yeoman service bringing new readers up to speed, it may be hard for them to keep so many characters straight--or care about them--when most of their development took place in previous volumes published decades ago. The focus is on Linden rather than Covenant, whose passive and distracted presence mostly gives others something to react to, but that won't matter to Covenant's large and loyal following, for whom Donaldson delivers all the self-loathing, despair, guilt, pain, and stubborn determination they could ask for.
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From Booklist

The third volume of the concluding tetralogy of Thomas Covenant maintains the high standards of the first two volumes. Covenant’s spirit has been released from the Arch of Time, and his body is intact. But for this to happen, Linden Avery has had to assemble so much magical power that she is in danger of waking the Worm of the World’s End. The Worm is a classic apocalyptic beast, but it is highly credible that he could destroy the Land, all in it, and perhaps parts of an earth that is closer to the Land than we may have thought. The only hope of survival is for Linden and Thomas to assemble all their possible and not-so-possible allies, including Linden’s adopted son, Jeremiah, who may live up to the biblical implications of his given name and be a harbinger of disaster rather than hope. Donaldson remains a romantic who believes in lovers who will risk all for each other. He is also a writer of extraordinary power and imagination, whose Land certainly has flavors of Middle Earth but has now stood for two generations as a major fantasy creation in its own right. --Roland Green