The Illearth War (First Chronicles Series #2) » (Reissue)

The second volume in the epic Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
Thomas Covenant found himself once again summoned to the Land. The Council of Lords needed him to move against Foul the Despiser who held the Illearth Stone, ancient source of evil power. But although Thomas Covenant held the legendary ring, he didn't know how to use its strength, and risked losing everything....

Gale Research

"Covenant is Donaldson's genius," John Calvin Batchelor of the Village Voice believes, "and I would be delinquent if I didn't say that although Donaldson writes dense and strangled prose, Chronicles has, at its heart, an unqualifiedly sublime idea--that the last shall be first."

Because of the strangeness of the Land and his place in it, Covenant finds it hard to believe it even exists. He calls himself "The Unbeliever." "He doesn't quite believe," McClellan states, "that these adventures are happening to him in a land of giants, dwarfs, strange animals, sorcerers and evil spirits. . . . The fact that Covenant doesn't quite believe in himself and that he is not a hero born and bred may be helping him to find a readership among Americans, who are also, perhaps, a bit dubious about their taste in fantasy."