Twenty years ago, Stephen R. Donaldson published six books that went a long way to creating modern fantasy. These were a part of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a leper on earth who becomes immensely important to the people and the survival of the Land. Now, with the Runes of the Earth, Donaldson returns to this mythos and, ten years after Linden Avery has witnessed Covenant's death, she is made aware that the Land has need of her. This is the first of four books.