Customer Reviews

The Atlas of the Land: A Complete Guide to the Strange and Magical Land of Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

while impressed with the ammount of detail that fonstad put into the middle-earth and dragonlance atlas', the atlas of the land seems almost bland in comparison (most likely because this was fonstad's first book). most of the pages have barely anything on them, and the maps confuse the time periods from both trilogies. the areas are listed by region, seemingly jumping around from place to place and time period to time period seemingly at random, rather than chronilogically from both the covenant books. even worse, there are hardly any cross-sections, which fonstad excelled at with the dragonlance atlas. what a pity. if you're a die-hard covenant fan, this may be worth an absolute maximum of $25, but otherwise you're best suited to your imagination - you will be dissapointed otherwise.

A definite must for any Donaldson reader! I can't imagine the amount of work that must have went into the construction of this book! The Land comes to life through meticulously researched and constructed illustrations and maps. Virtually all of the places presented in both the Covenant series are illustrated and scaled. Maps of Covenant's journey are drawn to scale and labeled to correspond to events in the series. A superbly researched and constructed work. The perfect companion to one of (if not the greatest) fantasy series of all time. Excellent excellent excellent! Since this book is out of print, if Amazon can't get one for you, go to EBay and bid on one. You can't fully appreciate the Covenant series without having read it with Karen's book at your side.

I purchased this book in between reading the First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. After reading the First Chronicles, I had a great admiration for Mr. Donaldsons depiction of Thomas Covenant and his journeys through The Land. He tells an outstanding story (which remains my favorite fantasy series to this day). It was not until I read Ms Fonstad's Atlas of the Land that I acquired a truly indepth feel for The Land. Thanks to this work, I feel as though I have actually been to the places Covenant had been. She includes maps of all the locations Covenant visited in all four of his translations to the land. Highly recommended.

I found Karen Vonstad's The Altas of the Land to be an exhaustive geographic representation of every inch of the Land. It was delightful to see Donaldson's words portayed in a graphic map-like format. I've read both chronicles multiple times and this book filled in blank spaces that had persisted through the many readings. I found myself engaged with every inch of the plot as I moved geographically through the Land. A thoroughly impressive work and excellent companion to the chronicles themselves.

While any Thomas Covenant fan will undoubtedly enjoy this book, it is the least detailed of Fonstad's Atlases. No color and some of the pages are sparse on illustration. This is the Fonstad's first atlas (others being atlases of Pern, Middle-Earth and the Dragonlance world), and it shows in this atlas.

On the other hand, it does do a great job on visualizing Donaldson's world, reguardless of comparison to the other atlases.

Good book, but the other atlases are much better.