Chronicles of Thomas Covenant/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Lord Foul; also, the Ravers
  • Magnificent Bastard: Covenant's son, Roger.
    • Your mileage can really vary on this as he can also be construed as just a Big Bad Wannabe
  • Moral Event Horizon: In the first book, Thomas Covenant does something horrible, which firmly establishes that, unlike a typical fantasy protagonist, he is not The Cape (trope). He spends the rest of the first trilogy trying, painfully, to drag himself back out of the moral black hole he fell into. Covenant's behaviour lead to a kind of cascade effect whereby the majority of bad stuff that happens in the book, and a lot of the series, is a consequence. The same goes for a significant amount of Covenant's suffering. Basically, it haunted Covenant for the rest of the series. For instance, Lena gave birth to Covenant's child, who was not completely sane, and went on to break a chunk of reality (the Law of Death) and give the Big Bad access to infinite undead armies of anything, up to and including fossils.

    Foul himself has an odd crossing, because it is entirely verbal before he has a chance to actually do anything. Just reading his rant to Covenant about how he is going to corrupt and destroy the Land and there is nothing anyone can do to stop him, culminating in the declaration that he will annihilate hope from the universe, puts you off on rooting for the guy for good. It all just cements Foul's rep as what Card Carrying Villains want to be when they grow up.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: The first Trilogy is an obvious Captain Ersatz of everyone in The Lord of the Rings, with several the races being types of human instead of elves, orcs, dwarves, and so on (and the other races are unique, rather than the standard ones, the only exception being the Giants). Used as a Deconstruction of the high fantasy genre.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Some readers enjoy the series much more once they get past Lord Foul's Bane.
  • Ugly Cute: The jheherrin are described as bizarre, misshapen assorted critters formed of clay and mud. They are also adorable.
  • Wangst: And how!
  • The Woobie: Everyone. I mean everyone.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: High Lord Kevin was pretty much this. Elena Foul-wife also qualifies. There's even speculation in the third series that Foul might be one.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant/YMMV?oldid=1176077"