When the 3rd Thomas Covenant series started I was ecstatic. I pre-ordered the hard cover version of the first book, The Runes of the Earth, and upon its arrival I instantly dove right in. Unfortunately, I quickly began to feel like this book was written to take financial advantage of my love for the Land rather than to tell me a good story. The book was full of uber-beings that supposedly always existed in the Land but had never revealed themselves before. These powerful beings had always been there but never surfaced even when the Land was on the brink of annihilation. WTF? My beloved Giants, which were so memorable in the first two series, had now become bland, expendable and boring. The same could be said for the stalwart Haruchai who were now corrupted and uninteresting shadows of themselves. It appeared that Donaldson had done what Lord Foul never could and desecrated the Land. Now I had become the Unbeliever.

​​​​​​​At the start of The Wounded Land over 4,000 years have passed since the end of the first trilogy (time moves at a different rate in the Land) and Thomas Covenant is once again summoned back to the Land. This time, however, he is not alone when he arrives as Dr. Linden Avery is summoned along with him. They arrive to find that the Land has been completely corrupted and a malicious force known as the Sunbane has made the Land almost uninhabitable. When the sun rises in the morning it does so with a colored aura every day. That aura dictates what happens to the Land throughout the day cycling at random times between rain, desert, pestilence and unnatural fertility. So day by day the Land either floods, has all plant life die away under oppressive heat, gets overrun by bugs, or has plant life grow at an alarming rate creating a jungle. Revelstone is now inhabited by the Clave who fuel the Sunbane through blood sacrifice and the few remaining inhabitants of the Land have adapted to use blood magic of their own. Covenant's heart is broken when he sees how the beauty of the Land has been corrupted and he vows to set things right and abolish the Sunbane. This is exactly what Lord Foul wants and he takes active steps to increase Covenant's ability to use the power of his white gold ring. Foul hopes to provoke Covenant to recklessly use his wild magic in anger and shatter the Arch of Time on his behalf. The state of the Land in this book broke my heart and I found that Donaldson had manipulated my feelings once again as I was now a staunch supporter of Thomas Covenant.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is a classic fantasy series published in 1977-1979. This is a very polarizing series for readers because the lead character, Thomas Covenant, is an anti-hero fraught with paradox. He is a young, best selling author living an idyllic life when his world is devastated by a diagnosis of leprosy. The disease not only costs him two fingers on his right hand but it also costs him his family, as his wife takes his son and leaves for fear of the disease. To make matters worse he is also shunned by the rest of the community in his small town and he quickly finds himself living a solitary life of despair. He is taught not to hope as there is no cure for his disease and hoping for one only leads to madness. Thomas Covenant is truely a man worthy of your pity. Then he is abruptly summoned to a beautiful and vibrant world known simply as "the Land" where magic is a reality and a cure for his disease is indeed possible. So what does he do? He commits an act of violence so heinous that he instantly transforms himself into a man now worthy of your hatred. Because Covenant is the only person capable of saving the Land from desecration author Stephen R. Donaldson now has you trapped in the paradox of hating Thomas Covenant and rooting for him at the same time. What a bastard.