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From: chabot@amber.DEC (l s chabot)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Chron. of Thomas Covenant
Message-ID: <238@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 09:35:11 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.238
Posted: Wed Jan 16 09:35:11 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jan-85 19:46:53 EST
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What Jim Gardner says about the protagnists in the Thomas Covenant books is
true... 

I prefer Donaldson's detective novels to his fantasy trilogies.  Yeah, a
character in each is blind and hurting and continues to hurt himself or herself,
but it's not on such a grandious scale and the story surrounds something that
causes the character to see again (without killing everyone in sight, losing
all friends, or other depressing global disasters).  The requirement of the
publishers that the mysteries be published under a pseudonym puzzles me--unless
they're worried that the mystery audience would be appalled to pick up the
fantasy, because I, coming from the opposite direction, was delighted:
_The_Man_Who_Killed_His_Brother_ is clearly Donaldson in style, but it's
Donaldson playing within rules of the real world which constrain catastrophes
and the impact of human grief.  _The_Man_Who_Risked_His_Partner_ is shorter,
deals with a problem leftover from the first novel, but stands on its own as a
separate novel. [It also has a strange paperback cover with flaps, and on the
inside back you find a biographical sketch of Reed Stephens: a retired cop who
teaches criminology at a university and who studies the works of Tolkien and
Donaldson (>ahem< maybe a bit pretentious, that, in the same phrase).  The
splashy cover may be promising--the first novel entered bookstores quietly and
lingered unseen (luckily about a year, long enough for me to find one).] 

Can't comment about running to the dictionary--I don't remember doing any, but
then, I'm *that* kind of debugger...

L S Chabot
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