Swissmiss's Reviews > The Wounded Land

I just... can't believe I liked this so much as a teen. I gave this 4 stars originally, based on my recollection of my impressions from 25 years ago. I remember devouring these stories, and the images and ideas of a land being under the grip of a climate-changing blood curse were so impressive to me that I carried them with me throughout my life. That was the reason I was so excited when I came across this book in someone's give-away pile. I wanted to be impressed again and immerse myself in this fantasy.

Reading it now, though, with more reading experience under my belt (and 4 years of college English courses as well as a Master's degree in Linguistics), I cannot say that I was able to duplicate my original experience.

The worldbuilding is still impressive, the vast mythology carried over not only from the first trilogy but from the intricately worked-out history which goes back millenia and is, yes, reminiscent of Tolkien in its detail and depth. The author doesn't go the standard (and cliched) way of elves and dwarves, either, but has invented his own races and creatures, including Ravers, Demondim, and Coursers.

But look at this:

"The figure's eyes were like fangs, carious and yellow; and they raged venomously out of the flames. Their malignance cowed Linden like a personal assault on her sanity, her conception of life. They were rabid and deliberate, like a voluntary disease, telic corruption." (p. 60)

That's two words that exist only in a thesaurus, and three similes in as many sentences. You don't even need to search for passages like this. Open up to any page, and there will be six words you've never heard before, minimum, and so many similes you begin to wonder if anything has any actual attributes, or only exists as a comparison to something else.

That's point one that all but ruined the reading experience for me. Point two is, the utter uselessness and inertia of the main character, Thomas Covenant. I remember this bothering me the first time I read the books as well: Why doesn't he just do something? Why does he keep moaning about not being able to do anything? Why does he wander from one place to another, seemingly just to see the sights? It has something to do with him being a leper, and thus unable to take charge or have any influence on anything, because if he does, he will corrupt it. I never really understood this point, and it made the book feel like moving through molasses.

"Covenant's legs quavered as if they could no longer bear the weight of who he was. But he braced himself on the rocks, remained erect like a witness and a demand."

I just had to throw that out there, as it illustrates both Covenant's inaction and the omnipresence of those infernal similes.

Finally, everyone has pretty much the same character traits: serious, dramatic, and grim. There's very little to differentiate anyone, other than their assigned role (guide, female with sensory overload, bodyguard). This means that the most interesting character, and the only one whose fate interested me, was the mute, black orc-like creature, Vain. He never spoke, and in (not) doing so, distinguished himself from all the pathetic speech-making of the other characters, who all spoke in the same urgent, impassioned voice, as if delivering their lines at a staging of Shakespeare-in-the-park. See, now he's got me doing it with the similes.

All in all, a disappointing experience.