SamuraiBeandog

Any fly brain that digital can't fly... all they know is play Doom, trade bitcoin, cut doner kebab and lie.

What the fuck has reddit got to do with anything? Touch grass, this keyboard warrior outrage isn't changing shit.

Very nicely put.

That's fair enough I guess. I just think that those details that you're looking for aren't what the novels are about. They aren't trying to create epic fantasy world building and evocative battles, they're an exploration of a man's pain and self loathing and his search for meaning and values.

I think getting into traditional fantasy heroics undermines that intent. If I remember correctly most of, if not all of, those kind of events that are portrayed in the book are essentially there to heighten the tragedy of what comes after. You mention in your OP writers like Tolkien and Martin and their explorations of morality and ethics but I don't think they are at all comparable to what Donaldson is doing. Tolkien's morality is incredibly simplistic, and Martin's characters display a variety of moral attitudes but they are rarely explored in any depth. The intent of those books is very different to the Covenant Chronicles.

I am curious now to reassess them, I'll have to make the effort.

I've only read the first trilogy, and it was when I was much younger so my impressions if I read it today could be different.

I think most of your criticisms are intentional decisions by the writer, the focus of the book is much more about the protagonist's point of view and the internal struggle they are going through, and the philosophical implications of his experiences. I remember finding the world building very unique and compelling when I read it, but its not "fleshed out" because you only see what Covenant sees, your perspective is confined to his.

But I also think the world building intentionally both mimics and subverts common fantasy tropes, with the cliched or shallow characters being used to explore the themes. After all, isn't the whole thing just a delusion that the main character is experiencing? Wouldn't his delusional brain populate it with archetypes and cliches? That would be a cop out of if that was the only reasoning, but I think he does successfully subvert or manipulate those tropes in a lot of ways.

When I first read it in the late 80s, I hadn't read anything else like it. Dark fantasy of this kind was not common (there was Sword & Sorcery stuff but I don't think that has the same kind of grounded, personal bleakness) and I found the unrelenting grimness of the main character and his experiences very provocative. I still don't think that there is a better example of a dark lord type villain that thrives on corrupting his opponents; the way that characters (and sometimes entire cultures) are manipulated into becoming the thing they hate the most is vivid and horrific in these books.

I've been meaning to re-read the series and see how it compares to my memories, I'll post here if I get around to it.

edit: I just looked it up and it was published in 1977. That's actually blown my mind a bit, I think this book was way ahead of its time in style and themes and was incredibly influential in genre fiction.

Actually massive, I was not expecting the punishment to be this big. Good job, Silver.

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh by Wendy S. Painting.

I've had this on my list for years and finally got around to it by choosing it for my bookclub, as revenge for being forced to read Dungeon Crawler Carl (I did warn them there would be repercussions).

It's a masterpiece; incredibly detailed and insightful, it also sprawls into an exploration of the American malaise and the cultures that create people like McVeigh. Incredibly dense and heavy, but utterly compelling.

How I look at the algorithm nerd on my team who just wrote code that is tightly coupled across 3 layers of the codebase.

Talk to a linguist about how languages evolve.

on top of the incredible, subtle, deep story telling of Souls

FTFY

Raimi's Evil Dead were just a unique phenomena, they are products of the time and the talent involved that you just can't intentionally recapture.