Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018)

A Wizard of Earthsea is perhaps one of the most important works of fantasy in the latter half of the twentieth century. So many authors and artists, from J.K. Rowling, Nnedi Okorafor, to Hayao Miyazaki have been influenced by Le Guin's Earthsea cycle. It could also be credited as one of the first works of young adult fantasy (although I'd argue it is a ageless tale). And although frequently compared with Tolkien's Middle Earth or C.S. Lewis' Narnia, this magnificent work of fantasy remains wholly unique and enthralling and quite original yet it still seems to fly under the radar for general readers. Le Guin sadly has not received the same status as Lewis or Tolkien.

Influenced by Norse and Native American mythology as well as Taoist thought (the idea of cosmic balance), Le Guin's depiction of Earthsea is just as rich in ideas as Tolkien's Middle Earth. She was able to create entire preindustrial cultures for the islands of Earthsea (such as the white-skinned Kargish people, and darkskinned Hardic peoples) .Earthsea itself is an archipelago or group of islands. In the fictional history of this world, the islands were raised from the ocean by Segoy, an ancient deity or hero. The world is inhabited by both humans and dragons, and several among the humans are sorcerers or wizards, including our hero in the Wizard of Earthsea, Ged.

Ged is the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea. When we meet him he is reckless yet talented youth named Duny (or "Sparrowhawk"), who is gifted with the power of magic. When his village is attacked by Kargish raiders, Duny summons a fog to conceal the village and its inhabitants, enabling the residents to drive off the Kargs. Hearing of this, the powerful mage Ogion takes him as an apprentice, giving him his "true name"—Ged. Ogion tries to teach Ged about the "equilibrium", the concept that magic can upset the natural order of the world if used improperly. In an attempt to impress a girl, however, Ged searches Ogion's spell books and inadvertently summons a strange shadow, which has to be banished by Ogion. Sensing Ged's eagerness to act and impatience with his slow teaching methods, Ogion sends him to the renowned school for wizards on the island of Roke where Ged, in his proud nature, will casts a powerful spell intended to raise the spirit of a legendary dead woman, but the spell goes awry and instead releases a shadow creature, which attacks him and scars his face. He soon discovers that the shadow creature he released is haunting him and is destroying the world.

The rest of the novel is focused on Ged's journey. It is focused on how he becomes a powerful and humble mage and how he journeyed to death's threshold in order to restore the balance within earthsea and to atone for his arrogant ways. Ged is a "superb creation", and in many ways is a more relatable wizard than those featured in prominent works of fantasy at the time. I mean, as much as I love Gandalf, he does really have a huge story arc in the LOTR. He is sort of fulfills a merlin archetype.

A Wizard of Earthsea is about many things but ultimately I think it a coming of age tale. Ged transforms from a reckless youth into a responsible mage in less than two hundred pages.It is the story of Ged's testing and his restoration. It is also about the nature of evil (the misunderstanding of the balance of life), the nature of healing (to truly heal one has to endure much testing whether it be physical or emotional or both and suffer the way Ged does) and the power of words (spells can be harmful and release demonic shadows after all or they can restore and bring order to the universe). In short, words have power and Le Guin knew this.

A Wizard of Earthsea is a beautiful story—poetic, thrilling, and profound and one of the best fantasy novels ever written. Please pick it up.


… (mais)

The Farthest Shore is the third book in Ursula Le Guin’s EARTHSEA series, and the concluding one for several decades. This wraps up Le Guin's original trilogy of Ged, better known as Sparrowhawk, the greatest wizard of Earthsea. It's a story about death, the deathlands, and the end of magic. It's dour subject matter. In a way, some of the themes of this book reminded me of The Last Jedi. Ged is essentially hermit Luke. The subject matter of this story is great but it is sad to see a character we just felt like we getting to know fade and his powers disappear. Its hard to bear. That is why in a similar fashion, The Last Jedi was a challenging film: it is hard to say goodbye to beloved characters, it is even harder to see them go through temptations and trails. Its hard to see our heroes lose, become old, and face the realms of death.

What is The Farthest Shore about? Well, Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk — Archmage (head of the magic school on Roke), wizard, and dragonlord — embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world — even beyond the realm of death — as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

This of course is a wonderfully written work but as many readers have noted, it is hard to read about magic going out of the world and Earthsea becoming horrible. It is in many ways also hard to identify with Ged and Arren. Le Guin said this is about death, but as Jo Walton noted: it’s about the way the fear of death sucks all the joy out of life. That's a tough pill to swallow in a so-called children's book but it is true and real and brutally honest.

In some ways this is much more like a conventional fantasy novel than the first two, which are small scale. Here we have a familiar fantasy troupe: a dark lord seeking and promising eternal life (cough cough way to rip off Le Guin J.K. Rowling!)

It was hard to read through this book because well, it is often bleak, but the ending does offer a ray of hope, don't worry.

This is still a vivid, philosophical work of the imagination, one that I think in time will grow on me, but I found it to be a more challenging read in comparison with the first two Earthsea novels.



… (mais)

The Tombs of Atuan is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in the Winter 1970 issue of Worlds of Fantasy, and published as a book by Atheneum Books in 1971. It is the second book in the Earthsea series after A Wizard of Earthsea (1969). The Tombs of Atuan was a Newbery Honor Book in 1972.

Set in the fictional world of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan follows the story of Tenar, a young girl born in the Kargish empire, who is taken while still a child to be the high priestess to the "Nameless Ones" at the Tombs of Atuan. Her existence at the Tombs is a lonely one, deepened by the isolation of being the highest ranking priestess. Her world is disrupted by the arrival of Ged, the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea, who seeks to steal the half of a talisman buried in the treasury of the Tombs. Tenar traps him in the labyrinth under the Tombs, but then rebels against her teaching and keeps him alive. Through him she learns more of the outside world, and begins to question her faith in the Nameless Ones and her place at the Tombs.

Like A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan is a bildungsroman (a coming of age story) that explores Tenar's growth and identity. Tenar's coming-of-age is closely tied to her exploration of faith and her belief in the Nameless Ones. The Tombs of Atuan explores themes of gender and power in the setting of a cult of female priests in service to a patriarchal society, while providing an anthropological view of Kargish culture.

This story is poetic, dark, beautiful, and haunting. The Tombs of Atuan takes on a different tone than its predecessor and veers even more away from traditional fantasy. It features a new and unfamiliar female protagonist instead of focusing on the established and familiar male one. It shies away from much of the adventuring aspects of Wizard and much of the genre; there is no grand epic adventure, no dragons, and no sailing off into the unknown (until the end in a very literal sense). Everything is purposefully claustrophobic, restrictive, and intimate. This is Tenar's journey.

The message of this book is that the past does not define us and that we too like Tenar can overcome darkness. It is also about the price of freedom and its burden. Its about Tenar's struggle to break free from the stifling dogma that shaped her beliefs and understanding of the world (take for instance, her view of other cultures). Tenar’s decision to be free of the corrosive influence of her masters comes at steep costs. She loses Manan, her old and faithful servant, in a struggle escaping the Tomb. She causes the destruction of the only home she had ever known in the aftermath. Most significantly, she loses her identity as Arha, the person she was for so many years. Le Guin, wisely shows us, that growing up, rejecting evil, expanding ones worldview is well, painful.

“A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

Highly recommended reading.… (mais)