I’m giving this book 3 stars, and I feel guilty about it. I feel guilty because I know it’s a classic, because it’s 50 years old and still going strong, because the writing is really beautiful, and because I KNOW that if I had read this 15-20 years ago, I would have adored it. 8-13 year old me, who reread books about Narnia and Prydain and various retellings of King Arthur legends year after year (and read a crapload of mediocre Catholic historical fiction in the […]
“We broke the world to make it whole…”
In a possibly controversial opinion, the final novel of the Earthsea cycle just might be my favorite. To get here, we’ve had two great adventures, an exploration of a foreign ritualistic spirituality, and a pointed take on the value of women in a world of male-dominated power, both political and magical. In this last book, all of those elements come together, and the story looks back to the origins of magic, just as it looks forward and asks where the people of Earthsea truly stand in the […]
“Oh yes. We’re precious. So long as we’re powerless.”
So remember when I wanted to read the “Where Are They Now” for Tenar, the young protagonist who escapes with Ged in the second book of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan? Well, it turns out, that’s what book 4 is about! Thanks Ursula K. Le Guin! From Goodreads: “Years ago, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan — she, an isolated young priestess; he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer’s widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary […]
A book that proposes a meaning of life
The Farthest Shore is possibly the most complex book so far of the Earthsea cycle, and probably the most challenging. The first two books examined the search for the truth within oneself: Ged embraces his darkness, Tenar her light. Both had to forgive themselves and find their absolution while dark worldly powers sought to use their fears against them. For a change of pace, The Farthest Shore sees its protagonists more or less at peace with themselves, but the world around them is collapsing because […]
Reading with the Lights Off
First of all, this is a sequel. If you haven’t read the preceding novel A Wizard of Earthsea, then go do that right now. It’s not long. I’ll wait… It’s wonderful, right? I remember how the prose grabbed me when I first read it, and it still grabs me that same way. It’s like The Gunslinger in that way; it feels truly, effortlessly ethereal. The text exists outside of time, as do all great fairy tales. And that’s the one problem with the sequel. Much […]
“But a dragon had spoken to her.”
Early in Tehanu, Tenar (hello old friend!) muses about her friend Moss, the village witch: “She thought Moss was following her heart, but it was a dark, wild, queer heart, like a crow, going its own ways on its own errands.” I can’t think of a better way to describe this book. In the last pages of The Farthest Shore, another mage says of Ged, “He has done with doing.” Tehanu is the story of what comes after The Doing. Ged leaves Roke and returns […]