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A review by steven_v
Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson
3.0
I finally finished this novel after something like 9 months, and I have to say it is my least favorite of the first 9 (out of 10) Covenant books. This novel cannot be entirely blamed for the length of time it took to read -- I did get distracted by three different video games, and a bunch of other things in real life. However, those items would not have had the ability to distract me for so long, had this novel been more engaging. It's not a bad book, by any stretch, and Donaldson's writing is still outstanding in terms of his word use, phrasing, and descriptive passages. Unfortunately, this particular installment in the series suffers from having not enough happen.
Several important things do occur in the first few and last few chapters. However, the middle 50% of it can almost literally be skipped and you would miss almost nothing. I lost track but there was a stretch of something like 200 pages that all occurred on the same day, in between the opening action sequence and the climax sequence, and for the duration of that day, literally, nothing happens. The characters stand around talking without coming to any sort of agreement. They wander around looking for water to drink and food to eat. And maybe they argue a little bit about what to do. But nothing happens of any note, and this section could have been condensed to maybe one 20 page chapter without losing anything.
Additionally, even the scenes in which things do occur, at the beginning and end of the story, feel drawn out, as if Donaldson was stretching them to reach a page count rather than having them take exactly as long as they need to take. Such writing is alien to this series -- in no other case have I felt anything was drawn out unnecessarily, and in fact Donaldson most typically has left me wanting more of each scene, not less. He failed to achieve that effect in this novel, however -- for the first time ever, in a Covenant novel, I found myself counting how many pages there were left. I should not be "doing a countdown" in a Covenant novel, and never have before -- instead, I usually feel sad when there are fewer and fewer pages left, because I don't want the story to end. In this novel, I felt the opposite -- I was relieved when I finally got to the end of it.
As I struggled to even muster the desire to open this book and continue reading it -- which for sometimes weeks at a stretch I could not do -- I found myself wondering how this could have happened. I haven't read the final novel yet, so I can't say for sure, but I have the suspicion that Donaldson may have originally planned this to be another trilogy (the other two series are trilogies so this would only be logical), and found that, for the final book, he had too much material for one novel, but not enough for two. My guess is he was unable to cut it enough to fit it into one novel, and didn't want a 900+ page single novel, so he divided it in two, and then maybe had to "puff up" the 3rd book to make it the same size as the others. I have no idea if this is what happened, of course, but that's how this novel reads... as if the writer had 250 pages of good material and puffed it up to make it 500+ pages.
In addition to the fact that the entire middle of this novel goes nowhere and was, for the first time ever in a Covenant series, tedious to the point of being boring, by the end of the novel (and avoiding spoilers), too many of the bad guys are still in play. Now, this was an issue that started to make me nervous in the first two books, but I figured with four books left there was room to handle things. In the series we have not just Lord Foul, and all three Ravers, but Kastenessen, Roger, the Sandgorgons, Joan, and the Worm of the World's End. By the end of this novel, which is now 75% of the way through the fourth series, all of these villains but one are still in play (I won't say which one, here). I can't imagine how Donaldson is going to achieve a satisfying ending that concludes the threat of all these villains, without the ending being rushed in the extreme. He is a gifted writer, and I am hoping he can pull it off. But the 575 pages of this novel, in which hardly anything is resolved, seem like an enormous wasted opportunity to at least handle a couple of these villains, leaving only one or two "big bads" (e.g., Foul and one other) for the final novel. But we will have to see how it goes.
In the end, this is an acceptable but not enthralling installment of an otherwise brilliant series. Donaldson is a literary genius, in my estimation, and if anyone can pull things together for the final novel, he would be the one to do it. But for the first time in the Covenant series, I am concerned, and I worry that the final ending might not live up to what I had hoped.
Several important things do occur in the first few and last few chapters. However, the middle 50% of it can almost literally be skipped and you would miss almost nothing. I lost track but there was a stretch of something like 200 pages that all occurred on the same day, in between the opening action sequence and the climax sequence, and for the duration of that day, literally, nothing happens. The characters stand around talking without coming to any sort of agreement. They wander around looking for water to drink and food to eat. And maybe they argue a little bit about what to do. But nothing happens of any note, and this section could have been condensed to maybe one 20 page chapter without losing anything.
Additionally, even the scenes in which things do occur, at the beginning and end of the story, feel drawn out, as if Donaldson was stretching them to reach a page count rather than having them take exactly as long as they need to take. Such writing is alien to this series -- in no other case have I felt anything was drawn out unnecessarily, and in fact Donaldson most typically has left me wanting more of each scene, not less. He failed to achieve that effect in this novel, however -- for the first time ever, in a Covenant novel, I found myself counting how many pages there were left. I should not be "doing a countdown" in a Covenant novel, and never have before -- instead, I usually feel sad when there are fewer and fewer pages left, because I don't want the story to end. In this novel, I felt the opposite -- I was relieved when I finally got to the end of it.
As I struggled to even muster the desire to open this book and continue reading it -- which for sometimes weeks at a stretch I could not do -- I found myself wondering how this could have happened. I haven't read the final novel yet, so I can't say for sure, but I have the suspicion that Donaldson may have originally planned this to be another trilogy (the other two series are trilogies so this would only be logical), and found that, for the final book, he had too much material for one novel, but not enough for two. My guess is he was unable to cut it enough to fit it into one novel, and didn't want a 900+ page single novel, so he divided it in two, and then maybe had to "puff up" the 3rd book to make it the same size as the others. I have no idea if this is what happened, of course, but that's how this novel reads... as if the writer had 250 pages of good material and puffed it up to make it 500+ pages.
In addition to the fact that the entire middle of this novel goes nowhere and was, for the first time ever in a Covenant series, tedious to the point of being boring, by the end of the novel (and avoiding spoilers), too many of the bad guys are still in play. Now, this was an issue that started to make me nervous in the first two books, but I figured with four books left there was room to handle things. In the series we have not just Lord Foul, and all three Ravers, but Kastenessen, Roger, the Sandgorgons, Joan, and the Worm of the World's End. By the end of this novel, which is now 75% of the way through the fourth series, all of these villains but one are still in play (I won't say which one, here). I can't imagine how Donaldson is going to achieve a satisfying ending that concludes the threat of all these villains, without the ending being rushed in the extreme. He is a gifted writer, and I am hoping he can pull it off. But the 575 pages of this novel, in which hardly anything is resolved, seem like an enormous wasted opportunity to at least handle a couple of these villains, leaving only one or two "big bads" (e.g., Foul and one other) for the final novel. But we will have to see how it goes.
In the end, this is an acceptable but not enthralling installment of an otherwise brilliant series. Donaldson is a literary genius, in my estimation, and if anyone can pull things together for the final novel, he would be the one to do it. But for the first time in the Covenant series, I am concerned, and I worry that the final ending might not live up to what I had hoped.