Book Review by an Addict

This is the first book of a wonderful trilogy set in a world very similar to Tolkien's "Lord of the Ring" trilogy. But Donaldson's choice of hero offers a twist which makes this trilogy, to me, a deeper and more personal read.

Stephen R. Donaldson's hero, Thomas Covenant, is a person from our world -- only he happens to be a man recently afflicted with leprosy. As a leper, he has quickly learned the consequences of being outcast from society. And as a leper, he has learned that he cannot rely on his physical feelings to wanrn him against dangers to his health. He must constantly make visual checks of his body to assure his health and he must live out this struggle in absolute isolation.

When he is plunged into an alternate world, he finds that his leprosy is healed and that he is no longer an outcast, but an apparent hero and redeemer. The narrative traces his struggle with whether to accept this alternate reality or to ignore it as simply a dream. He constantly struggles to maintain his identity as a leper, fearing that he will lose the survival skills he so desperately needs in our world. And he fears the hope that this alternate reality/dream offers his body. Such hope, he believes, could be deadly to a lepper.

This story rings true in the heart of an addict. For the addict, like the leper, lives a life of isolation and despair. The addict cannot rely on his feelings to tell him what is true. And when the addict first enters the world of recovery, where other addicts reach out and support him, he is often stuck in a conflict between what he has always known as real and the new vision of healing presented to him as real. The addict struggles with whether it is too risky to give up his old ways of survival. Does buying in to recovery doom the survival of the addict, or can the addict really be healed?

A major thumbs-up for Thomas Covenant, the unbelieving hero of Lord Foul's Bane. He stumbles in the footsteps of addicts everywhere.

"And he who wields white wild magic gold
is a paradox---
for he is everything and nothing,
hero and fool,
potent, helpless---
and with the one word of truth or treachery,
he will save or damn the Earth
because he is mad and sane,
cold and passionate,
lost and found."

***************************

"No, consider further, Covenant. What value has power at all if it is not power over death? If you place hope on anything less, then your hope may mislead you."

"So?"

"But the power over death is a delusion. There cannot be life without death."

Covenant recognized that this was a fact. But he had not expected such an argument from the Giant. "All right. So you're right. Tell me, just where the hell do you get hope?"

Slowly, the Giant rose to his feet. He towered over Covenant until his head nearly touched the ceiling. "From faith."