Donaldson's trilogy (Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War, The Power That Preserves, all published in 1977), pits good against evil, and in this elaborately drawn cosmos he introduces many interesting and entertaining characters. Most complex, of course, is Thomas Covenant himself, who, Donaldson says, is a man "torn between the impossibility" of believing that the Land is true, and the impossibility of believing it false: It is unreal and irrefutable. He comes into his power when he learns to affirm the paradox itself."

Part of what has troubled Covenant results from his illness: He no longer has a sense of connectedness with those around him. Living in an imposed isolation has driven him to the brink of suicidal despair; the fantasy world of the Land offers him a way to give his life meaning — if he will only learn to accept it as being as "real" as the...