[JDP]

The problem that I find with Covenant is, because I can't empathise with him, I don't care whether he overcomes his internal struggles or not. The core of his personality seems to be:

a) he has leprosy.

b) he has been conjured into a fantasy world.

c) he has trouble coming to terms with these facts.

These are things that happened to him, through the plot; they should not be who he is. If he resolves these issues, there is nothing left. I feel he exists as a tool of the plot as opposed to a character in his own right. He is the embodiment of frailty and as such is a bit two-dimensional. I want a character to be human (or alien, or reptilian, or a continent-wide neural network or whatever) not just a plot device, otherwise I won't feel compelled to spend hours of my life 'watching' them (much the same reason as I don't watch Big Brother, I guess).

I wasn't frustrated by the fact that he wouldn't believe/constantly doubted himself/was stubborn and obstinate; I was frustrated because he was predictable. Perhaps if I'd have stuck through a few more of the books I'd have seen him flesh out a bit, but there wasn't anything there to convince me to put in that kind of effort.

To be honest, I find it really interesting that so many people (yep, I know there're a lot of you) feel very differently towards TC than I do. It's good to see that a genre that is sometimes considered very narrow (generally by people who have never read in it) can create such broad differences of opinion.