The Wounded Land
[These notes were made in 1984:]. Bk. 1 of the Second Chronicles. The title says it all - or just about. This is not the Land delightful to the imagination that we encountered in the first series, but a frightful and horrible permutation of it, under the influence of what is called the Sunbane, a work of (guess who?) Lord Foul. It is ten years later in the "real world," 4000 years later in the Land, and the principal change is that this time Covenant has unwittingly dragged along a woman doctor, Linden Avery, whose internal goings-on are, it seems to me, going to be the focus of the second trilogy. I found this volume extremely dark and depressing. There was no real resolution - a minor victory for Covenant in that he manages to put to rest the ghosts of the giants who were slaughtered in the last book of the first trilogy. But I must say I miss the characters of that first trilogy - Lord Mhoram, Bannor, Foamfollower - and their reappearance from the dead only serves to sharpen that longing.