Leslie

Thus Thomas Covenant, accompanied by Linden Avery, begins his search for the One Tree aboard the giantship Starfare’s Gem. Armed with the knowledge given to him in Andelain by his trusted friend, the Forestal Hile Troy, Covenant was determined to succeed. He was the last hope for the salvation of the Land, because only he had the power to forge a new Staff of Law and, with it, to stop the encroaching desecration of the Sunbane and the bloody sacrificial rites of the Clave.

Eighty years into the future, the United States is a no-man’s-land: its landscape blighted by chemical warfare, pollution, and plague; its government collapsed; its citizens adrift, desperate, fighting to stay alive. In fortified compounds, survivors hold the line against wandering predators, rogue militias, and hideous mutations spawned from the toxic environment, while against them all stands an enemy neither mortal nor merciful: demons and their minions bent on slaughtering and subjugating the last of humankind.

An air of pleasant anticipation hung so thickly over the Halls, Holds, and Weyrs of Pern that it had affected even the businesslike ways of Moreta, the Weyrwoman of Fort Weyr. Her dragon, Queen Orlith, would soon clutch; spring had made a glorious debut; the Gather at Ruatha Hold was extremely merry; and Moreta was enjoying the attentions of Alessan, the new Lord Holder of Ruatha Hold. Then, without warning, a runnerbeast fell ill.