And by hard I mean hard. No pussy-footing around here.

This series started life as a novella in which characters representing villain, victim, and rescuer would switch places during the course of the narrative. Donaldson found the result unsatisfying, and the book was shelved until he had the idea of setting a retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in the same universe, and casting the characters from The Real Story in roles from Wagner’s opera.

The Real Story novella became Volume 1, and the rest of the series explores the Wagner theme. The series is not the Ring Cycle explicitly retold, but more an interpretation set in a future universe.

Like the author’s other major work, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, the story can be very dark and bleak at times; but it draws you in, takes you along for the ride, and what a ride it is. Some of the best hard-SF I’ve read in my life.