SCIENCE FICTION

SCIENCE FICTION
'Covenant' seriesis filled with intrigue
It can be a blessing and a curse to write a series as wildly popular as "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever" and "The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant."
For Stephen R. Donaldson, the blessing is the public's embrace of the two series, consisting of six books published between 1977 and 1983, especially after initial rejections from publishers. The curse: Readers' expectations are high for "The Runes of the Earth: Book One of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" (Putnam; $26.95), the first of four books that will conclude the Covenant tale. Considering that it has been 21 years since the death of Thomas Covenant in "The Second Chronicles," Donaldson is expecting a lot from himself, also.
Runes is set in two worlds, the contemporary one and the magical realm of the Land. In the one we readers inhabit, Linden Avery is a doctor at the hospital where Covenant's wife, Joan, has been institutionalized. Avery herself is still mourning for Covenant, her onetime companion.
Covenant's son, Roger, a former member of an extremist religious group, shows up to check his mother out of the hospital, but Avery won't allow that. When she goes home, she discovers that not only has Roger taken Joan from the hospital, but he has also kidnapped Avery's adopted son, Jeremiah, and fled to the Land.
Avery awakens in the Land, where Roger is helping Lord Foul -- whom fans met in the first Covenant book, "Lord Foul's Bane" -- plan an escape from the Arch of Time.
This is a complex saga, but readers new to Donaldson will not be at sea. There is an eight-page summary, but it's best to begin with the story itself. Donaldson shows you previous relationships and conflicts while advancing this epic with page-turning intrigue.
So Donaldson has met those high expectations, and there is no curse, except for the one you might utter at book's end: "I want the next book right now!"