The Illearth War was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1977, the second volume of the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It is structurally the most innovative of the trilogy: for much of the novel, the narrative follows Hile Troy — a man born blind in our world who was somehow drawn to the Land, where he gained sight and became Warmark (military commander) of the Council’s forces — rather than Covenant himself.
Troy is everything Covenant is not: competent, willing, believing. He accepts the Land as real, loves it, and fights for it with tactical brilliance. His story is a conventional heroic narrative — the kind of story the genre usually tells. Donaldson places it alongside Covenant’s anti-heroic paralysis to demonstrate what he is refusing: Troy shows what acceptance looks like, what believing costs, and why Covenant’s refusal is simultaneously rational (he is protecting himself) and monstrous (he is abandoning people who need him).
The war itself is massive in scope — Lord Foul’s armies, led by giants and wielding the Illearth Stone (a weapon of corrupted Earthpower), march against the Land’s defenders. Troy’s military campaign — a strategic masterpiece that ends in a terrible sacrifice — occupies the novel’s middle sections and provides the kind of epic warfare that fantasy readers expect. But Donaldson refuses to let this satisfy: even Troy’s heroism is ultimately insufficient. The Land is saved not by strategy but by Covenant’s belated, agonized act of commitment — using the wild magic of his white gold ring in a moment of desperation that he still refuses to fully believe is real.
Collecting The Illearth War
First edition (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1977): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $75–$200
- Without jacket: $8–$15
- Complete First Chronicles (three firsts in jackets): $100–$300
The second volume of one of fantasy’s most divisive trilogies. Values track with the complete set rather than individual volumes.