 |
|
[Covenant Site] [Gap Site] |
> Home > Last Chronicles Watch
Last Chronicles WatchBecause I know you are all interested in the possibility of a Third (or Last) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, I've decided to start up a section on the site in order to put all of the information that we can find on it. I'll just tell you now that the Third Chronicles IS being made. Any other information is still unknown. If you have any solid information on the Third Chronicles, please send it in. Also, if you want to discuss the Third Chronicles with others, be sure to check out the Message Board. BEWARE! This information is only as reliable as it looks. I can't make any promises about the final product of the Third Chronicles, since I'm not SRD and have no connection to him, heh. The information that I get comes from what I think are reliable sources, other SRD fans. I appologize if any of the information turns out to be false. ALSO! The rumors about the Third Chronicles contain inf ormation about the events occuring in this future series. Nothing real big, but they still can be concidered spoilers. If you are the type of person who hates spoilers of any kind, then this is your warning. Amazon.co.uk Lists 1st Book in Last Chronicles - Approximate Date - October 2004 (Submitted by Danlo from the message board - 8/23/03) (Thanks to Danlo and Ringthane for their reports from Bubonicon) Donaldson read 19 pages from chapter 5 of The Runes of the Earth, Book One of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It is part of a 190 page prologue. (story synopsis below...) The series will be a tetralogy and here are the, tentative, titles to the other books: Fatal Revenant Shall Pass Utterly & The Last Dark SRD says he has no publisher at the moment but expects publication of the 1st book by very late 2004 or Spring 2005 at the very latest. The books will be published one after the other... He said that the 1st Chronicles were the "muscle" books where Lord Foul is akin to Hitler forging armies and A-bombs to ruin his enemies and break his prison. In the 2nd Chronicles Foul's method is an attack on the natural order of things. But in the 3rd Chronicles Foul's final means of escape will consist of a massive attack on and corruption OF TIME ITSELF!!!!!!!! The audience was rendered speechless for 2 minutes straight after he said this--this answered any and all questions about the present, future and the past. "We will go back before the Lords, back before the Old Lords, the whole history of the Land will become relevant to the present." he said. Even during the question and answer sessions no could could think to pose any futher question re: The 3rd Chronicles, he had destroyed us all in one fell swoop!!!!! Chapter 5: (Summary) Key elements and characters: Set ten years after the end of The White Gold Wielder Dr. Linden Avery is now Director of the Berenford Memorial Hospital where Joan has been a patient in the psychiatric ward. Linden has adopted an autistic boy named Jeremiah. Sara Clint is one of Linden's top nurses and Sandy Eastwall is Jeremiah's babysitter. Roger Covenant has completely lost his mind and kidnaps Joan and Jeremiah, taking Sandy and Sara as hostages. Linden, following the abduction at the hospital, arrives at her house to discover that Roger has taken Sandy and Jeremiah. She notifies Sheriff Litton, grabs her medical bag and a heavy flashight and runs to her car with a preeminent idea of where he is gone. It is night, friction lightening crackles constantly above her causing a strobe effect of alternate realities as the wind pounds her down. She finally gains her car and drives through a totally deserted downtown past the telephone company, the town's only department store and the courthouse where Thomas Covenant's marriage was dissolved. The lightening renders the heads atop the courthouse into grotesque monsters as the howling wind slows her speed. How far ahead is Roger? The streetlights flicker and then go out altogether...Perhaps the lightening has caused a tree to fall across the powerlines or has knocked out the main transformer? Disoriented, she slams on the brakes, then hits the accelerator as hard as she can heading for Haven Farm, two miles away. She envisions Roger, with a gun, dragging Jeremiah away, ready to stop him at all costs. Her teeth bared in a rictous smile. Roger's madness is so lucid he has no need for life. She drives even faster now fearing that Litton may have already reached them, or simply may not care. Speeding towards Roger's home, as an infant, along Righter's Creek. She remembers Covenant taking care of Joan there and as she starts up the driveway sees a spot twenty yards away where she once worked to save an old man's life. "Be true.." he had said "...however he may assail you, there is also love in the world." She still feels very lost without Covenant despite all the years of love she has given Jeremiah. She reaches, what is now, Roger's house and inheritance, the clapboard has turned from white to gray by years of neglect. There are no lights on, contrary to Roger leaving all of them on at Linden's house as a symbol of his work. She gets out of her car and sees Roger's black sedan with it's trunk open, as if he was carrying something important, something he needed. Or perhaps he had stuffed Sara and Sandy in there instead.? The Sheriff doesn't appear to be there and she is overwrought thinking about how these events could futher traumatize Jeremiah, who as a very small child was forced, along with his family, to stick his right hand into the Despiser's bondfire. Fighting the wind she manages to open her trunk and retrieve the bag and flashlight. As she turns to go a huge swirling gust slams Roger's trunk shut. With a start she cluthes Covenant's wedding ring that hangs at her strenum. She tests the door and as the handle turns the wind blows it wide open. It is too dark inside and as the tears the dust has caused lessen she begins to make out the living room. It is as if an earthquake has struck; broads are cracked and broken, plaster from the cieling lies all over the floor, the couch has been slammed against a wall, gutted by rats and roaches. Many sections of the wall appear blasted away by a shotgun. Small dark patterns begin to emerge on the floor, the patches are slimy, thickening blood. Linden had sworn that Roger would never claim Joan even over her dead body. She makes her way through the hallway to the kitchen seeing even more splotches of blood. Pieces of florescent lightbulbs lie scattered on the floor, the cabinets and widows all broken. She can waste no more time before Roger offers Jeremiah to Lord Foul. She makes her way down the long hallway past bedrooms and the bathroom to the room where Covenant tended Joan in her madness. Lightening flashes so close and with such a fierce white light that the walls seem transparent and the house shakes. As she tries to breathe throught the ozone she sees Mrs. Jason and her children by the altar. The bedroom feels toxic and doomed as if Covenant's leprosy has seeped into the walls. Sara Clint lies desolate on the bed, a huge kitchen knife impaled in the pillow. Roger has strapped her ankles and wrists to the bed with duct tape, but no gag, and has made a series of cuts through her clean white uniform, but finally cut through her corotted arteries from ear to ear as if he wanted more blood than he could gather. Roger has taken Sandy, Jeremiah and Joan to open the way for the Land's destruction. As the ozone begins to clear she realizes she can't smell Sara's blood, but instead is assailed by smoke that smells like Foul's bondfire. She realizes that that last bolt of lightening has set the house on fire and stands transfixed in terror as if ready to merge into the Land. Then suddenly she snaps to the fact that Roger cannot open the portal because he lacks the ring! She runs to the kitchen throughtthe heat, fire and wind--as a tumault of flame brusts towards her from Covenant's room. She goes to the window and uses her medical bag to break out the rest of the glass and tosses her bag and the flashlight to the ground. As she climbs out the window she catches her left palm against a shard of glass and sees that it is bleeding. Finally, she picks up the bag and flashlight light and runs towards the woods behind Haven Farm then stops and turns to watch Thomas Covenant's house die. Click to see questions answered by Stephen R. Donaldson involving the Last Chronicles - Submitted 3/30/03 (Submitted by Mouseglove from the message board - 3/24/03) Greetings all, I am freshly returned (about 9 hours ago) from the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and am ready to tender my report. Fact stuff first: * YES, for certain, SRD is writing the 3rd Chronicles * No street date for the 3rd Chronicles yet. * There will probably be FOUR (not three) books in the series. * Linden is the main character, in the Land because Lord Foul has her son. SRD read from the first book, but he read from page 710, and said the book was "a little over halfway done". The scene he read was about Linden having come back from running, and melding, with the Ranyhyn, which almost killed her. It was stark, epic, and basically wonderful. He talked about having had trouble deciding what to read, because the book heavily utilized something called "stirring cycles", which are basically time-shifted narrative segments as far as I could tell. I took notes during the reading, mostly because I recognized that I was hearing pronunciations. I'll give them AP-style below: Ranyhyn: RAH-nee-hin Manethrall: MAYN-thrall Aliantha: ah-lee-AHHN-thah Haruchai: hah-ROO-chiy (like Chai tea) Amanibhavam: ah-mah-nee-bih-VAHN Afterwards, I asked him about the Del Ray info that had been posted here. He told me that the people at Del Ray have treated him VERY badly for the last 10 years of so, and that, even though they were now making noises about being interested in publishing his new books, odds were good that he would be taking them elsewhere. (Submitted by Khaliban@wi.rr.com - 3/19/03) NOTE - This e-mail contains quotes from SRD about specific details involving the Third Chronicles. They could become potential spoilers. If you don't like spoilers of any kind, then you may want to avoid this e-mail. I submitted this material to the Thomas Covenant Yahoo group a couple of years ago. This is a copy of that post, but I am the originator of the information. I sat in the audience while SRD told us about the 3rd Chronicles. As a side note, at an earlier GenCon, I asked Michael Whelan what he thought of SRD. He told me he was "a really nice guy" and reminded him of an accountant. I saw Donaldson at GenCon in '96 where he gave a couple of question and answer sessions. His story on the Second and Third Chronicles is as follows. Lester del Rey loved working with new writers, but once he had a successful writer, he wanted them to continue with what ever series brought them fame. He and Donaldson had lengthy (and I believe good natured) discussions on continuing the Chronicles. Donaldson wanted to write something else, perhaps Mordant's Need. (I got him to sign those, by the way.) Del Rey pushed Covenant. Finally, Lester del Rey suggested a truly horrible idea for a sequel. (Donaldson couldn't recall the idea. Sorry) But, when he heard the idea, he thought "No, we shouldn't do that. We should do this." and plot of the next two sequels fell into his head and wouldn't leave. So, he wrote the Second Chronicles. That burned him out. He wrote Mordant's Need, the Gap Series and some mystery novels. However, he had not abandoned the third Chronicles. He gave us three pieces of information on them. First, he was beginning to work on the plot again. Second, he planned to start writing early in the new millenium. (I don't know if his plans have changed) Third, Covenant will destroy the universe. He didn't say how. (Submitted by Sylvanus from the message board - 2/14/03) From : "Del Rey" DelRey@randomhouse.com Subject : RE: Donaldson's 3rd Chronicles Date : Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:18:46 Dear Mr. Frost, The rumor is true: Stephen Donaldson is writing a new Covenant novel, but he's only about halfway through, won't venture a guess as to when he'll be done, and hasn't sold it to a publisher yet, so I can't give you any information on when it will be out. We'll be doing our best to buy it, of course - wish us luck! Best wishes, Rebecca Badurina Online Representative Del Rey Books (Submitted by Mouseglove from the message board - 10/29/02) From: Mitchell, Betsy Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 8:13 PM Subject: Rumors of the Chronicle Dear Renny, Stephen Donaldson tells me he is in the middle of a new Covenant novel, but he won’t say when he thinks it will be done, so I can’t give you any guess at a publication date. Check back every six months or so and I’ll give you an update! Thanks for writing in. Betsy Mitchell VP/Editor-in-Chief, Del Rey
|