Christopher Selmek's Reviews > The Illearth War

Overall this has been a satisfying book, even though some of the details are irksome. I think Donaldson’s intention is to describe the Land and illustrate its history, which he does very well and in complex detail.
This one is divided into three sections. In the first, where we are introduced to the main characters, Thomas Covenant’s real life picks up almost immediately after the end of the first book. It’s hard not to feel bad for him, because everyone in the town seems to want him dead only because he has leprosy. He has no one to care about him, but when his ex-wife calls him – the one thing he’s been fantasizing about – he stupidly refuses to speak and then trips over the phone cord and hits his head.
Hile Troy is a different matter. He has been blind since birth, in fact he has no eyes at all, but somehow begins seeing things after arriving in the Land. I can see Donaldson setting up some kind of pantheon with a guy who can’t feel, a guy who can’t see, and maybe eventually someone who can’t speak, hear, or smell. However, in Troy’s case, when the narrative goes to first person it always describes his perspective with visual details. We see the soldiers vanishing in the mist before him, at one point he’s afraid the last battle will be fought in a storm, and I have to wonder why he cares. Sight should be a luxury, not something that preoccupies him as much as it seems to in this book.
Nevertheless, the march to war is handled very well. I like the resolution to the second part, and I also like the way Donaldson brings it around again in the third part. A different author might have said that Covenant’s arrival to the Land triggered the events he did because that’s just the way it happened, but near the end of the book Covenant begins to realize that Lord Foul orchestrated his arrival for just that reason. In that way, his initial reluctance to join the fight was correct, and by choosing to do his part he caused the high lord to make things much worse. I can’t say I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, but there’s eight more books in the series so I’m sure there are many more details of the Land left to explore.