Can a story be built on a TRULY unlikable main character?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Today we're going to be talking about Lord Fowl's Bane, which was the Patreon picked winner for the month of April this year. And it is a book that I found completely strange and baffling and confusing. The decisions that the author was making, the story beats, the character beats, what was happening. It's so unconventional in what he's doing at any given moment. and it kept me on the back foot. It kept me off balance, but at the same time, it pretty much kept me engaged from the very beginning all the way through to the end. But my connection with the book, the characters, and the story as I read it and going on throughout it was extremely complicated, but I think that was the point.

[00:01:01]Lord Fowl's bane is essentially the story of a man who is a leper and he is diagnosed with this disease and everybody around him pretty much shuns him. He is exiled from the community. No one will talk to him. No one will touch him. They feel like he's diseased. They treat him like he's diseased. He's essentially become a pariah. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, he's thrown into this fantasy setting. And he is the coming of this prophecy that's going to save their world and save their realm and everything and whatnot. And from there he has to grapple with being this idea of the savior for these people while also grappling with the idea of being worthless and being incapable of literally anything. Even walking and stubbing his toe could be a lifealtering event for him. So the idea of going on a quest and saving an entire world is just not comprehensible to him. Then the book feels like as you're going through it, especially once you get into like the meat of the story, it feels like the book was written around the idea of is it possible to build an entire story and an entire narrative from the ground up around a character that is utterly and completely down to his very core unlikable.

[00:02:30]Like there is basically no redeeming qualities to this character. Thomas Covenant is just kind of insufferable. He's kind of a piece of Like at first it does a really good job of investing you in the character, making you feel bad for him, show showing his situation that he is in in the United States in this small town suburban city. And you really start to feel for the guy like, man, this guy's life kind of sucks. Everything that he's been through is so hard. And you kind of feel for him. And then it switches. It flips on you hard once he gets over into this fantasy setting. He really he just turns into a real kind of piece of He treats people like He acts like There is the scene which luckily for myself I will say I'm not going to spoil anything here but I think this book is infamous enough that everybody knows what I'm talking about when I say the scene and luckily for me I knew nothing. I absolutely went into this book completely blind. I it seems crazy to say that you could go into something with this now that I've read it and I kind of looked into the book. It's kind of infamous in what it's doing and how the, you know, some of the things that happens. And I'm just I'm kind of glad that I went into it blind because that scene was jarring. Like I was literally taken way off guard, caught off guard by it. I did not I was genuinely shocked when that happened. And then like it doesn't get better for afterwards.

[00:04:18]like we I'm like really this is how what our main character is. This is who we have to follow for the rest of this book and this is what this is going to be about. Then not only that, not only the atrocities that he's committing, it's the fact that he's so lost and trapped in his own self-loathing and his own selfdoubt that he just literally is completely insufferable. the entire length of the book and on one level it's completely and utterly so well written in the sense that it is utterly believable because somebody with the background and what we got to see of him in suburban America and who he is and what's happened to him has created this man has created this pit of despair walking self-pity that he is and it's so believable from a writing perspective and a character perspective.

[00:05:19]But at the same time, that doesn't make him likable because he's believable. And the fact that he just doesn't want to learn. He doesn't want to grow. He doesn't want to evolve as a person. He just wants to be broken. He just wants to wallow in self-pity. and this despair and this self-loathing that he seems to carry around with him everywhere. And then he takes all of his own inner turmoil and he externalizes it onto the people around him and it breaks the people around him because this world wants to believe in him. This world sees him as the coming of their prophet. This the coming savior to their land. So, they're all in and they have faith and belief in him regardless of who he is and regardless of who he continues to prove himself to be to them. They still back him 100%. And it breaks them. He goes through the incident with in the beginning of the book the scene and then after that he will travel for the good chunk of the first part of the book with a mom. the mom and his travels with her will utterly crush and break this woman.

[00:06:41]It's insane to read. You're like, "What am I even going through? This man is like just toxic to everything he touches." And it's just the idea of building a narrative around this character is fascinating to me because it's like the who decides to do this?

[00:07:02]What is even happening in the author's mind? Like, oh yeah, this is a real good choice for a book, and it's not just a book. Apparently, there's 10 of these things. Does he become likable at some point in the 10 book series? I sure as hope so, cuz I think the series would break me if he didn't.

[00:07:23]Anyway, now having all of that out of the way, so if the character is just kind of a piece of the entire way through and he's insanely unlikable, how can I be engaged with the story? That's kind of part of the reason why I was engaged with the story is because the decision to make this book around him is just such a fascinating choice. Then it's telling a complicated story, very complicated from like a character perspective and a moral perspective because there's no real moral north compass for this because we're following Thomas Covenant and it's just everything is happening and you're waiting for him to like grow and evolve and engage and overcome his shortcomings or overcome something. And at every step it feels like it's challenging the reader. What is right? What are we doing? What is the world? Is this does this world even exist? Is this literally like, oh, it was all a dream type situation? Because it is when he goes from the real world into this fantasy setting, it's really played like this is all just in his mind because an accident happened. So does any of it matter? Is it a journey for him? Is it a journey of you know the sub discovery of the subconscious? What exactly is happening here? And is there even a point? And it's just so interesting to follow through the story and follow through the beats with all of these things in the background. All of these character traits that are just difficult from from him, all of these other things from the world. Does it even exist? Does it even matter? And what are we learning? And what is he trying to say? And it's just really interesting and engaging from that perspective. Then there's the writing.

[00:09:21]This guy is really, and this was my favorite part of the whole thing, he's really good. Like really, really good. I can see why Stephen Donaldson and Stephen Ericson are friends. Like that makes perfect sense to me now. As soon as he gets going and you're on the boat and the giant starts like going off on some of his weird stories and you're just kind of floating through the language that is this book and the language that Stephen Donaldson is using and the way he uses the words and the language and the just the feelings and the thoughts that it evokes in you as you're going through it is truly wonderful. ful like his writing is great and it's just once again there's that polar dichotomy of the this this majestic writing really good pros with ah not so majestic characters and it was just it was fascinating to go through this and to experience this book I don't know how many more of them I want I want want to experience um yeah it was I we'll see. I I want to at least maybe go another book or two, finish the original trilogy um at some point. I don't know how quickly I'll get to them, but I do would like to just to see where this goes and how it evolves because, you know, by the end of this, we're kind of back. I don't want to say anything about the ending, but you know, when it ended the way it ended, I thought that's quite an interesting choice because now how do we get into book two after we got out of book one?

[00:11:05]Even though book one ends very clearly with a road forward into book two, we locationwise, how do we get to book two? if that made any sense from a non-spoiler perspective. But anyway, fascinating book, really engaging, really wonderful writing, wonderful pros, but at the same time, really complicated and challenging from the perspective of who we're following and what we're being asked to go along with as we go through the story with this guy who is utterly relatable and understandable on one level and detestable on another. And it's just very complicated. Very, very complicated. And just it feels like a massive achievement and a big swing. And if there's anything I say, it's I always say, "Give me a big swing." I would rather have a big swing in a miss than a story that plays it safe and gives you the same old new twist on the same story you've always heard. Haha. And this, if this is something, it's a swing. That's for sure. It's It's definitely a big swing and I can appreciate it from that perspective 100%.

[00:12:25]Anyway, I don't even know what to rate it to be quite honest now that I'm here at the end of the video. I just kind of didn't think about this part of it.

[00:12:32]That's bad. Um, I'm going to say eight for now and just because it was so engaging and the writing is just literally topnotch and I'll sit right there with that. Anyway, everybody, as always, the link for my Patreon's in the description below. The link for my Discord's in the description below. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.