20131016.0636

Yesterday, Stephen R. Donaldson's The Last Dark, which purports to be the final volume of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, was released.  I have a copy, and I have already read it, staying up until half past midnight or so to finish the book as I was compelled to do.  And I was compelled; despite its problems, the book is well worth reading.

Something I have noticed in final volumes of fantasy series is that authors often try to bring in every available loose thread in the milieu.  Every character given page-space earlier in the series comes back (whether it makes sense or not), every group finds itself represented in the final pages, and often through devices that seem too much of deus ex machina to be believed--even when a wizard has done it.  The Last Dark does this; I will not go into details so as to not offer specific spoilers (it is only the second day of release, after all, and not many read so quickly as I do), but I was several times struck by the...oddity of specific characters appearing when and how they did.

Too, Donaldson's depiction of women remains...problematic.  From my work at such events as the South Central Modern Language Association conference and the International Congress on Medieval Studies, I am given to understand that Donaldson is...unpopular among those literary scholars who treat fantasy literature, in no small part because he repeatedly portrays women...unfavorably, either as dependents or as victims (to a far greater extent than the men in his Covenant books, who frequently victimize women in addition to being themselves victims).  I understand the attitude; I understand not wanting to endorse a series whose eponymous protagonist makes himself a rapist within the first hundred pages of a narrative arc spanning three dozen years.  And I am trying to negotiate that understanding with my captivation by the narrative and my burgeoning interpretation of the milieu and the actions taken within it.

This is not the first time I have written about Donaldson's work.  Now, as then, I find much of value in it.  Now, as then, some of it is in the way his diction forces me to increase my own knowledge of words; as I have noted, my vocabulary is far from small, and I was once again sent to the dictionary to understand the language Donaldson chooses in the work.  Once again, though, I find that his use is excellent, doing much to bear out the old adage about the right word and the nearly right word; I am too much beset by bugs.  And, despite the problems of deus ex machina and misogyny noted above, the plot is compelling and, for the most part, characters' reactions are sensible, given the narrative constraints--the end of the world at hand in the last book is happening in The Last Dark, and the circumstance permits what would otherwise be...odd behavior.  That there is some resolution--substantial, really--also satisfies; I have not read the books since their beginning (I have not been alive long enough), but I have read them for many years, and I am pleased to see the series come to an ending that makes sense.