The Wounded Land

Balrog Award 1981. Mythopoeic Fantasy Award nominee 1981, British Fantasy Award nominee 1981, Locus Award nominee 1981.

"You are mine!"

The voice was that of Lord Foul the Despiser, gloating over his triumph. Thomas Covenant, leper and pariah in his own world, was back in the Land, high up on Kevin's Watch, again listening to the evil promises of Foul. And beside him lay Dr. Linden Avery, whose efforts to save him had doomed her to share his summons.

Ten quiet, undisturbed years had passed for Covenant since he was last called to the Land where magic and Earthpower worked. At that time, as ur-Lord Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, he had used the wild magic of his white gold ring to defeat the evil plans of Lord Foul and seemingly destroy that ancient enemy of the Land. He had believed that Foul was banished forever.

But time was different here. In the Land, nearly four thousand years had passed. Foul had returned to power, stronger and more determined to destroy this world than ever, no longer checked by the rule of the Staff of Law. Earthpower was useless against the Sunbane, which desecrated the Land under alternating drought, pestilence, and unnatural fertility. In Revelstone, the na-Mhoram exacted a tithe of blood sacrifice on all who still existed. Elsewhere, a man might have to shed the blood of his own child to save his community.

"You are mine!" Foul's evil laughter gloated.

Thus begins a new trilogy, The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, with all the power and magic that made the original Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever a bestselling trilogy, already acclaimed a classic.