He could taste in his own mouth the desperation which had led High Lord Kevin to Kiril Threndor and the Ritual of Desecration. Power was dreadful and treacherous. When it was not great enough to accomplish its wielder's desires, it turned against the hands which held it. High Lord Elena's fate only repeated the lesson of Kevin Landwaster; he had possessed far more power than the new Lords could ever hope for, now that the Staff of Law was gone; and all his might had achieved nothing but his own ineluctable despair and the ruin of the Land. Mhoram feared to share that danger by revealing his secret. He was appalled to think he was in such peril himself.

-- The Power That Preserves

Passages like that are why I've read the Chronicles many times and what inspired me to spend dozens of hours shaping this web site. Even more than the vivid descriptions of geography, warfare, individual stuggle and ultimate triumph, it is the quiet and serious introspection of fascinating people like Thomas Covenant, Lord Mhoram, Saltheart Foamfollower and Linden Avery that bind me in Stephen Donaldson's spell. Fantasy writing that is unafraid to travel outside the bounds of traditional literature, unafraid to express itself in extravagant language, and most of all unafraid to explore the truly dark, repellant side of our common human nature.

There are many fantasy and science fiction books I enjoy but this is the only web site I've built in tribute to the power of an author. And Stephen R. Donaldson is a powerful author, whether you like his work or not, whether you feel he's closer to Mhoram or Covenant or the Despiser. There are no less than 71 Tolkien WebRings at last count, hundreds of Tolkien web sites and thousands of people posting newsgroup messages with names taken from his novels (including me, sort of ... for a while I was King Arglebargle IV on www.theonering.net's Arena discussion forum) but there aren't more than a handful of real S.R.D. pages out there and not a single WebRing til now. That's just not fair in my eyes. Perhaps Donaldson holds up a less glamorous mirror in which the reader sees facets of himself or herself; defects normally suppressed, denied or repudiated. But without exception we humans all have ugliness, violence, hatred and inadequacies within. And to me the Land is as grand and magical as Middle Earth, and in its context the necessity of confronting issues of Good and Evil are even more vital.

The rewards of perusing the Chronicles are slow in coming but if you can endure Frodo's puttering around for a couple hundred pages you can handle Thomas Covenant's trip to the post office. The Chronicles' benisons far outweigh those of nearly any other written work I can name. And that's important because reading them has never been a comfortable experience for me -- physically, mentally or emotionally.

• Physically it is demanding because I'm always reluctant to just put the book down. When I try to read casually, the unfolding of the Land and its drama is so clear in my mind's eye that it sweeps me along with ineluctable force. I read and continue reading whether I'm hungry or tired or have a pounding headache or it's past dark and I have to work early in the morning. I'd much rather be at Covenant's side enduring his travails than wherever I happen to be at in the real world. It requires willpower to put the book down (just one more page ... this is a short chapter ...) and unlike the Silmarillion or Lord of the Rings it is impossible for me to blow through the entire series in a single rainy weekend. Sometimes after being buried for uncounted hours, my body forces me to come out of it, feeling exhausted and wondering where the day went.



• Mentally it demands concentration; to read through slower passages (especially the "real" world passages before the Summonings), to evaluate characters' actions, words and thoughts, to speculate on deeper meanings and alternate interpretations. Where enjoyable but lightweight fare such as the Dragonlance and Black Company books zip by at breakneck speed more like a mental cartoon than a novel, the Chronicles are much like Thomas Covenant himself: complex, many-leveled, serious, dark, easy to misunderstand and difficult to deal with. Sort of like my favorite -- and dangerous -- hikes here in Hawaii.



• Emotionally the Chronicles are demanding at best, and like the Seven Wards, perhaps a little dangerous to the unprepared. In general if you're dealing with Nice People, when you start caring about a person you can bet dollars to donuts they're going to meet a shockingly violent and unpleasant fate (off the top of my head: Lena, Elena, Triock, Trell, Saltheart, Lords Hyrim, Shetra, Verement and Callindrill, Memla, the Haruchai, Hamako ...) When I've read them during rocky or vulnerable periods of my life their melancholy has pervaded my own emotions leaving me disconsolate and a little depressed. It takes considerable positive influence to counterbalance my participation as a reader in the sustained emotional assault and trauma of Covenant's tribulations. When I've read them lately, during a relatively strong period of my life, they've absorbed me deeper intellectually but fortunately less emotionally. Even so I'd never introduce the Chronicles to a person who was chronically depressed.

After reading all that, you may wonder why pick up the books at all. I can only answer that I ask myself questions like that after a particularly brutal gym workout or grueling mountain hike, but I never stop weightlifting or hiking. Maybe Nietsche was right.

-- Sandor Szabo