CBR 17 BINGO: “O” (for “Other”)
BINGO: Rec’d, Culture, O, Green, White
I started reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s Books of Earthsea last year, and I just recently completed the final (sixth) novel in the collection: The Other Wind. As I mentioned in my earlier review of the initial trilogy, there’s something unique about reading a long-established classic and genre-defining series for the first time. The Books of Earthsea are epics in the vein of Lord of the Rings, and something every fantasy enthusiast should read at least once (probably more than that).
In The Other Wind, a sorcerer named Alder comes to visit Ged on the Island of Gont. Ged was the original hero of A Wizard of Earthsea, and a former Archmage. Now much older, Ged has lost his powers and lives a quiet life on Gont with his wife Tenar (The Tombs of Atuan) and their adopted daughter Tehanu (Tehanu). Alder comes to Ged to find relief from the terrible dreams he’s been having since the death of his wife Lily. He dreams about the world between the living and the dead, where dead souls, including Lily, beg him to set them free. Powerless to help, Ged suggests Alder go to the Island of Havnor, where Tenar and Tehanu have recently been summoned. Ged thinks that his wife and daughter, and perhaps King Lebannen, can help him.
At the same time, Havnor is having drama of its own. Dragons, which normally don’t initiate conflict with Havnor, have been menacing nearby islands. Furthermore, the Kargish king has dropped his daughter Seserakh off on Havnor with the implication that, if Lebannen wants peace, he might want to marry the princess. Lebannen is furious about this, much to Tenar’s dismay. Tenar (who you may remember is also Kargish) and Lebannen are close, and she can’t figure out why he is being so stubborn about getting married. It’s part of a king’s responsibility, after all, to marry and continue his lineage, and peace is not an insignificant motivation for selecting a spouse. Meanwhile, she befriends the princess, who doesn’t know a soul, doesn’t speak the local language, and is almost completely isolated.
As the fates of Alder, the dragons, and the people of the West appear to be intertwined, the novel climaxes with the group, plus an emissary from the dragons, going to the Roke Island, the “center of the world” and home of the School for Wizards, to try to set things aright.
The Other Wind is probably my favorite in the Earthsea series. For one thing, Le Guin is successful at rectifying the male-dominated world she presents at the beginning of the series, something she acknowledges in the Afterword to A Wizard of Earthsea. Not only does this installment have a respectable balance of female to male characters, these women also support each other. I love how Tenar befriends Seserakh and teaches her to speak the local language. The mother-daughter scenes between Tenar and Tehanu are also touching, as Tenar struggles with her own emotions while pushing Tehanu to stand on her own and find her destiny. All this, when Tenar just wants to “go home. . . .to her own house, her own work, her own dear man.”
“Going home” is a key theme in this novel, along with death, reincarnation, destiny, and healing. For all the weighty events that are happening in the world, the quiet moments stand out: the mending of a pitcher, the tending of a garden, the playfulness of a kitten. The significance of small moments is highlighted when Alder shares details with Tenar about the short visit he had with Ged before arriving in Havnor. Le Guin writes, “She listened intently, seriously, as if these small matters were as weighty as the strange events they had talked about here three days ago–the dead calling to a living man, a girl becoming a dragon, dragons setting fire to the islands of the west. Indeed, he did not know what weighed more heavily after all, the great strange things or the small common ones.”
I’m happy to have finished my first read of this collection–although, I’m not quite finished. The 2018 Sea Press collection includes some extras, including “A Description of Earthsea, Peoples and Languages,” and some additional short stories. Before I tackle those, I almost want to go back to the beginning and re-read the hexalogy, or as Le Guin characterizes it, the dual trilogy. My tagged collection is ready for my next encounter.
