The Runes of the Earth

New York Times bestselling author Stephen R. Donaldson presents the first novel of the four-volume finale to the series that’s become a modern fantasy classic: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.Thomas Covenant lost everything. Abandoned by his wife and child sick and alone he was transported while unconscious to a magical dreamlike world called the Land. Convinced it was all a delusion Covenant was christened The Unbeliever by the Land’s inhabitants—but gave his life to save this new-found world he came to regard as precious.Ten years after Covenant’s death Linden Avery still mourns for her beloved companion. But a violent confrontation with Covenant’s son who is doing the evil Lord Foul’s bidding forces her into the Land where a dark malevolence is about to unmake the laws of nature—and of life and death itself. It is here that she comes upon Esmer son of the Dancers of the Sea a creature of strange powers who draws Linden backwards through time to witness Thomas Covenant’s return to life and to reinvent the mysterious dangerous and violent history of the Land.