Against All Things Ending

The unreservedly emo penultimate installment in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (after 2007's Fatal Revenant) follows Linden Avery as she struggles to rescue her adopted son, Jeremiah, from the Despiser and forestall the Worm at the World's End, which she awoke by yanking her love, Covenant, free of the Arch of Time. While an introductory plot summary does yeoman service bringing new readers up to speed, it may be hard for them to keep so many characters straight—or care about them—when most of their development took place in previous volumes published decades ago. The focus is on Linden rather than Covenant, whose passive and distracted presence mostly gives others something to react to, but that won't matter to Covenant's large and loyal following, for whom Donaldson delivers all the self-loathing, despair, guilt, pain, and stubborn determination they could ask for. (Oct.)