The Blog Fantastic 041: Tehanu Review (Unread 023)

When I look at my bookshelves, certain books stand out. Some of them do so simply because their covers or spines are visually alluring. They catch the eye without much effort and they immediately distance themselves from other books next to them. Some books practically leap off the shelf because the sight of them causes a flow of memories to rush into my mind. Feelings, passages of the book, memories of my time reading them, all appear in my head. Other books with a strong presence, perhaps the strongest, are the works I consider to be classic. The books I consider to be masterpieces and written by some of my favourite authors. I’ve reread them before and I’ll read them again because they’ve stirred something up inside of me.

Not all book lovers make lists about the best books they’ve ever read or who their favourite authors are, but I do. I’m one of those people. While I’ve admired Ursula K. LeGuin’s writing since I’ve read The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Volume 1. While slowly reading my way through her Earthsea series she steadily made a place for herself amongst favourite authors. Reading her online blog made me like her as a person (and I’ve come to learn quite a bit about her cat in the process). After reading Tehanu, the fourth book in the series, I’ve had to shuffle around some of my best of lists. Earthsea is an unconventional, sometimes emotionally devastating, and always masterfully written fantasy series. Tehanu is one of the best fantasy book I’ve read in my life. I was so thoroughly impressed by LeGuin and this novel that I’ve been living in a state of deep thought ever since. Why don’t more people talk about LeGuin? Why doesn’t anybody mention Tehanu as one of her great works?

The Blog Fantastic 013: The Farthest Shore

One of the reasons I like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series is that she doesn’t spoon feed her readers. There has been an increasing tendency in fantasy literature to write huge, sprawling sagas that give the reader insight on every little thing that happens to dozens of characters during the entirety of an epic saga. I’m not too critical of it because of my limited experience with very long series but I have enjoyed it in small series. However, when I think of what the final two books of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the series has clearly changed from a detail heavy realistic approach to medieval fantasy to a travelogue for the various characters travelling around on the continents of Westeros and Essos. In that series, Martin seems to have become obsessed with the idea of subjecting his reader to every hour of his characters journey. I prefer Le Guin’s approach to her story. The first Earthsea book was written as if an ancient legend. The writing style played a big part in this but Le Guin also chose not to show the reader everything. Like the oldest of legends, we only have bits and pieces, not the whole story. In the second book, the feeling that the Earthsea series is the retelling of an old legend is somewhat lost because the story shifts focus to another character and the reader experiences the Deed of Ged. I’m not sure this approach would suit every fantasy story, but Le Guin uses it very well with this series.

What does this have to do with The Farthest Shore? In the third book in the series the reader encounters Ged, or Sparrowhawk, at another stage in his life. He’s no longer the young adult from the first two books. He’s now an older man and Archmage of Roke. There is at least 20 years of Ged’s life that we do not know about. Since I haven’t read the series in full, I have no idea if Le Guin revisits this period of Ged’s life in later books but I love the idea that we do not know anything about Ged for an extended period of his adult life. People who know the legend of the Deed of Ged know the beginning and know the end but we’re not privy to the details of a significant portion of his life and that’s fascinating because it gives the reader the opportunity to discover who Ged is a second time because the older man his is in The Farthest Shore is pretty different from the young man we met in A Wizard of Earthsea.

The main plot of the story is simple, perhaps even deceptively so. The son of the Lord of Enlad, Arren, journeys to the island of Roke to inform the wizards that magic is dying in the islands to the West. Sparrowhawk, who is now the Archmage of Roke, takes Arren on a journey throughout the Archipalego to discover the cause of the weakening magic and, if possible, bring magic back to Earthsea. That’s the foundation on which Le Guin builds a powerful novel that deals with such themes as death and power. During their travels, Ged (Sparrowhawk’s real name) and Arren discover just how important magic is to everyday life on Earthsea, so important that for some people who have lost it can only going on living by being heavily intoxicated. Some entire islands, such as the island of Lobarnery which has an economy based on the production and sale of silk is in a degrading state because of the loss of magic.

The World of Earthsea:

One of the reason I enjoyed The Farthest Shore so much is that Le Guin had her characters explore parts of Earthsea the reader hasn’t been to yet. One of the places the characters visit is one of my favourite world building elements in the book, the Children of the Open Sea. They are a society that lives on rafts out on the open sea. Some of the rafts are so large they have temples and other public buildings on them. Most of their tools, clothing and building materials come from the sea. They build ropes from seaweed and carve various tools and other objects from the bones of large grey whales which they also worship and call the Great Ones. Le Guin uses Arren’s interaction with the Children of the Open Sea to point on the differences of their cultures compared to the cultures of the other people we’ve already met in the series. I really like how Arren interacts mostly with the children. He’s new to this culture of living on the open sea and talking, playing and working with the children is the best way of learning the basics. I really like how the kids make fun of Arren for the way he swims. It only makes sense that the Children of the Open Sea are excellent swimmers since they live on open water. They are a bit rude to Arren but it’s the rudeness of children. They don’t filter what they say; it just sort of comes out. When Arren first responds to the children’s comments he does so while being “a little mortified, but polite; indeed he could not have been rude to a human being so very small.” Le Guin’s writing is filled with such truths of human interactions.

The other world building aspect that made a big impression on me was the dragons of Earthsea. We’ve encountered them before, notably in the first novel. I was blown away by Le Guin’s portrayal of a fantasy creature I thought I knew so well. Sure, there are many types of dragons in both real-world mythology and in fantasy fiction of all languages but Le Guin’s dragons are something altogether special. The most important dragon in The Farthest Shore is called Orm Embar. That’s his real name and it’s very important to point that out because knowing someone or something’s true name is to truly know that person or thing. It’s also the basis of magic on Earthsea. Orm Embar is a dragon so old and powerful that he doesn’t bother hiding his name. Dragons are the only animals able to communicate with humans through the use of language. They are beautiful and dangerous and Le Guin shows this balance by contrasting how they can at times be civilized and other times they can be incredibly animalistic and violently savage.

The Magic Of Earthsea:

Le Guin uses words like Ged uses magic. That is, sparingly. “The first lesson on Roke, and the last is do what is needful. And No more!” I don’t want to talk too much about the magic that is present in The Farthest Shore, in part because I’ve talked about it in some of my previous reviews and also because it’s tied into the plot and I don’t want to ruin the story. Le Guin’s writing style feels a bit like magic. It’s an absolute joy to behold. She has such mastery and command of language that I’m truly in awe by some of the passages in The Farthest Shore. It’s simple, deceptively simple. Her writing is clean, economical and it speaks trues about life. For a series of books in which magic is the knowledge and use of true names for people and things, Le Guin demonstrates that she too is a wizard of great power.  

I knew all of this before I began reading The Farthest Shore; after all, I read the first two books in the series. But this book gave me a new perspective on her writing. It’s theatrical and very dramatic. Not melodramatic but dramatic in the classical sense. Her characters feel big emotions; they have big dreams and face big dangers. There is gravitas in Earthsea and it’s contrasted by Le Guin’s cool and calm writing style. Each and every word appears in the right place and in the right order as if Le Guin is transcribing the true history of Earthsea as opposed to writing a book.

Of the tree Earthsea book that I’ve read so far, The Farthest Shore is my favourite. The story felt important and though I don’t agree with everything Le Guin writes about life, death and the abuse of power, I appreciate that she’s handling such difficult themes in fantasy fiction. The great evil of this book isn’t a mad overlord trying to take over the world. It’s human evil such as substance abuse and slavery. I really appreciated reading a story about an older Ged to counterbalance with the coming of age story that is The Wizard of Earthsea. Sparrowhawk’s reached an age where he can easily spend hours reflecting on his life and the decisions his made. Le Guin spends several pages writing about magic, life and death and if there’s one lesson to be learned from The Farthest Shore is that life is about dancing on the edge of the void without fear of falling in. It’s about accepting that one day you will lose everything that you consider valuable but that’s no reason to stop trying to achieve the greatest heights possible.

The Blog Fantastic 008: The Tombs of Atuan

Much like A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan is a story about growing up, about learning right from wrong and the importance of truly knowing yourself. The twist is that Ursula K. Le Guin tells the story from many different perspectives. The second book in the Earthsea series tells the story of Tenar, a young girl who is taken to the Tombs at the age of six to be the next reincarnation of the One Priestess in service of the Nameless One. The focus is on her, no characters or places from the first book make an appearance until nearly the hallway mark. Le Guin restricts our second stay in Earthsea to the grounds and undergrounds of the Tombs in much the same way Tenar, now known as Arha, is physically confined on this desert corner of the isle of Atuan.

Much less epic in scope, The Tombs of Atuan has a very different feel to it than the first book. Arha doesn’t seem to be destined for greatness and adventure. On the contrary, she seems to be condemned to the dark world of a cult to Nameless (and most probably faceless) powers. Her days are filled with dancing and sacrifice and countless hours of tedium. Once her duties as One Priestess led her to the Undertomb and the Labyrinth, she went on to explore these pitch dark passages in great detail until one day she encounters a wizard whose come to rob one of the greatest treasures in all of Earthsea. It’s at that point that the novel really kicks off into high gear and Le Guin entertained me endlessly.

This wizard, of course, is Ged from the first book. Now that he’s encountered and accepted the evil that is part of him, he’s become incredibly wise, patient and powerful. For anybody who’s read A Wizard of Earthsea, we know how this story ends but it doesn’t matter. Le Guin makes the events happen in such a beautiful and organic way that I didn’t care that I knew the outcome. Ged and Tenar’s interactions were a joy to read. How can she sacrifice such a powerful wizard from the outside world to the Nameless powers? She’s become far too bored and spiteful of her life as the One Priestes to ever entertain the thought for too long. Instead of ending in violence, their time together slowly built into a friendship based on trust and a mutual desire to be saved. Tenar is no damsel in distress. She’s a young woman who has been far too well protected to the point where it’s stunted her growth as a person. Her inquisitive nature and desire for freedom eventually resurfaced after years of forceful repression. What she learns in company with Ged is just extraordinary and Le Guin’s sure hand and masterful writing made it all feel, well, magical.

Ged and Tenar contrast in nearly everything,
even the colour of their skin which is
representative of their upbringing. One out
on the ocean at the mercy of the sun and
the other buried and hidden in the dark
of the Tombs of Atuan.

As I mentioned earlier, The Tombs of Atuan is an Earthsea tale told in a completely different perspective than the first novel. It’s not grand and mythic, it’s small and personal. There are no dragons in this book, but Ged defeats a foe equally powerful as a dragon (a bored Priestess) and he does it with style and a quiet confidence that was a sheer pleasure to read about. If you weren’t convince of Ged’s greatest and power at the end of the first book, seeing him through Tenar’s eyes will surely help in convincing you now.

Magic in Earthsea:

Le Guin gives us a different perspective on magic in Earthsea. It’s not just about names, that’s the basics of it but it’s by no means the source of a wizard’s power. That comes from trust, friendship and compassion. The greatest act of wizardry by Ged in Atuan was rescuing Tenar and in turn being rescued by her. It’s a beautiful journey of self-discovery by two strangers who, despite the evil that could be found in their hearts and in the land find a way to free themselves and each other of dark responsibilities. It means nothing that you know the language of magic if you don’t have the sense to use it properly.

Le Guin shares with her readers that magic in Earthsea is not about having the power to do anything. It’s about having the power to do anything and doing the best thing. When travelling through the mountains, half starved, Tenar asks Ged if he can conjure any food. He could, but it would be all illusion, leaving them hungrier than they were. What about real food? He could call a rabbit to them but using its true name but would you then be able to kill the rabbit and eat it if you called it by its true name? It would be breaking an important trust between the rabbit and the one who knows its name.

Magic isn’t really used for everyday things. Wizards and Mages do not go around unlocking doors with magic. Tenar says to Ged about magic: “‘Your Magic is peculiar,’ she said, with little dignity of equals, Priestess addressing Mage. ‘It appears to be useful only for large matter.’” That may well be true but Ged goes on to inform her that “large matters” can wary in size and form. Stopping an earthquake, defeating dragons, those are clearly large matters, but maintaining trust between two beings despite the difficulties they must face is another type of “large matter”.

Dave Sim once said that the essence of storytelling is two people talking in a room. I don’t recall that ever being presented so beautifully than by Le Guin in The Tombs of Atuan. She harnesses this idea by having significant portions of the book be Lenar and Ged talking in near complete darkness in the underground labyrinth. The things they discover about each other and about themselves by simply conversing were impressive to witness. A trues tour de force by Le Guin, she’s a master of her craft.

A Wizard of Earthsea was about discovering yourself by accepting who you are, the good with the bad. The Tombs of Atuan is learning to free yourself by discovering who you are through your interactions with someone else. It’s much harder to help someone out of their misery than it is to condemn them to it, but it’s much more rewarding for both parties involved, when you talk it out and decide to risk it all by trusting your enemy to be the one to help you through tough times.  

The Blog Fantastic 001: A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea

Written by Ursula K. Le Guin

I discovered Le Guin’s writing a few months ago. There is a shopping centre near my apartment that has a bi-annual used book sale. I picked up the first of a two volume collection of short stories by Le Guin as well as one of her most celebrated science fiction novels, The Left Hand of Darkness. This short story collection, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, volume one, had quite the variety of genres and styles. It’s also quite interesting that some of the short stories here have serves as the basis for some of Le Guin’s later novels and series, specifically The Earthsea Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness, and Rocannon’s World.

One of my favourites was The Rule of Names which was the second story to be set in the world of Earthsea and establishes one of the more important elements of the series: the importance of true names in magic. The story takes place in a small coastal village where there is a village wizard who also serves as a school teacher and a healer. The little town is visited by a strange mage and with his arrival he unveils the dark and hidden secrets that, unbeknownst from the villagers, plague their quiet lives.

In this short story, Le Guin established the look and feel of Earthsea and also clearly identified one of the most important elements to the magic system of the series. It doesn’t hurt that she does all this in a humorous way and, for good measure, she includes a wizard or two, a dragon, a lost and stolen treasure, quite a bit of magic and a quaint, completely endearing, village populated with charming characters. It’s a spectacular little story and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Needless to say, this story along with The Words of Unbinding has made me want to read Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle.  After several months I finally read the first book and unsurprisingly I really, really enjoyed it.

In short, the book is the story of Sparrowhawk, the greatest wizard in all of Earthsea. Well, in truth, it’s the story of how he became the greatest wizard in all of Earthsea. Ged, Sparrowhawk’s true name, found out at a young age that he possess great power and affinity for magic. Under the tutelage of his aunt, the village witch, he took his first steps on the path to becoming a magician. After finding a mentor, he eventually travels to a school for wizards where he trained several years. After attaining his wizard staff, Ged travelled the Archipelago and took on his first job as a trained wizard.

Said like that the story is quite simple, and it is. It’s in part because of the simplicity of the narrative that A Wizard of Earthsea packs such a punch. It’s a powerful story about growing up, power, pride, friendship and responsibility. As a young boy, Ged is prideful and arrogant because of the knowledge of his great power. He’s quick to learn magic but he does so without great effort. He’s quick to take action but he plows ahead without thinking. On more than one occasion his excessive confidence and desire to be recognized lead him to make brash decisions that forever changed him. During a particularly destructive event, Ged unleashed an Evil upon the world. Afterword, he is haunted and pursued by this Shadow which feeds upon his strength. Every time they encounter one another, Ged is left weakened and alone.

As a young boy he wanted his strength to be acknowledged and he wanted to be respected. Following the events that took place during his stay at the school for wizards, Ged wants nothing more than to be left alone for fear of endangering those he cares for and to be given a chance to banish the evil he let loose.

In the end, after much personal growth and hardship, Ged is able to recognize and accept his fears and doubts and he becomes a stronger person, and a stronger wizard, because of it.

Le Guin’s story is incredibly focused. A Wizard of Earthsea is about Ged. Unlike many books, the supportive characters are not given their own side stories. From beginning to end, Le Guin forces us to follow Ged on his difficult journey to wizardry and adulthood. I say forced because Young Ged is a difficult character to deal with. He’s unlikeable and part of me was happy when his actions forced him to look at himself in new ways. That may be harsh, but it feels true and some of the lessons in lived are learned with much hardship.

Le Guin also manages to create a world that feels rich in detail and history in few worlds. A Wizard of Earthsea is less than 200 pages but they’re a dense 200 pages. This book doesn’t feel bloated or padded because it isn’t. There is a trend in fantasy writing where longer is better and it’s not always clear to the reader that this isn’t always a good thing. I can understand that for writers, having invested so much time in creating and building a world with a rich and diverse history and cities and lands that are populated with different cultural and sometimes ethnical groups all of whom have their own legends and customs that you would want to include all of it in your stories. As for readers, I can also understand the desire to be so fully immersed in a world so wonderfully detailed, inviting and rewarding but we must careful not to overstay our welcome. The more time we spend in a fabricated world the most adept we become at seeing the cracks in the wall and the glue that holds it all together. Much like horror and violence in movies and television can and often is more effective when portrayed off screen; fictional realms in fantasy novels can feel more real and more substantial when it’s not explained to the reader in all its detail. It’s far more interesting to read a novel than it is to read a visual dictionary of a fabricated world.

With relatively few pages, Le Guin makes the world of Earthsea feel real. I can smell the salt in the air. I can feel the oppressive dangers of sailing in a storm. Ged’s

Magic in Earthsea:

Magic in Earthsea is about words. Magic isn’t set in specific, unbreakable ruless. It’s fluid, it changes depending on the circumstances and the magic that is being cast. Despite this seemingly undefined quality to magic in A Wizard of Earthsea, Le Guin manages to make it feel very coherent.

Magic is also about knowledge and understanding. Wizards, mages and archmages alike, all discuss and debate on the mysteries of magic. There are some set rules but the extent of those rules and the minutiae of the mystical arts are somewhat open to discussion. The way Ged resolves conflicts with magic makes sense within the boundaries set by Le Guin earlier in the book. I’m very impressed that she was able to conjure such a believable and organized magic system without having to pummel the reader with endless explanations. It’s structure yet it retains some fluidity. I guess you could say she did it with magic, by using words to shape the world of Earthsea before our very eyes.

The world of Earthsea:

Earthsea is a planeet composed mostly of water. The story takes place in a large Archipelago where hundreds, maybe thousands, of islands are in relatively close proximity to each other. Despite this relative proximity, different languages and social norms and yes, even different cultures, exist in different parts of the Archipelago. On some islands slavery is perfectly acceptable. On most islands, wizards and users of magic are considered to be very important people and often times a city or village has a wizard to lives and serves the townspeople. He’s the wise man and a healer and a school teacher all wrapped into one person. Their currency is magic and it’s how they make a living.

The people of Earthsea aren’t your average white guy. Ged’s skin, like that of most of the characters, is a brown colour. These are people who live on islands and sail the seas. Their skin colour reflects their living habits and their homes. The people of the Archipelago are often outdoors and their isn’t the milky white of maidens who live in castles or even the same as the pink colour of a knight who’s always wearing leather and metal armor. The climate of Earthsea is similar to that of the Mediterranean or even that of the Caribbean (well maybe not everywhere, there was some snow and sleet in one of the chapters). Ged’s mage friend, Vetch, and his family have much darker skin. Again, this is presumably a result of his village being on one of the warmer and southerly islands. My point simply being, that it’s refreshing that Le Guin’s characters aren’t all young white males.

It seems odd to me that women don’t play a larger role in Earthsea. There are female characters that play a role in Ged’s life and his adventures once he leaves the wizard school but they’re minor characters at best. As a woman, I was expecting a more prominent female presence in the Earthsea novel. Le Guin’s portrayal of women and their relationship to magic is also interesting. Women seem to be relegated to the role of village witch, familiar in low level magic and spell that any male child can master with relative ease. It’s possible I missed something, but I did not see any sign of women having any sort of presence at the wizard school. Le Guin never addresses why or if men are the only magic users in Earthsea other than some limit magic that are used in some day to day life situations.

As the first book to be read in my Blog Fantastic series of post, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin was an excellent read. It’s very clear to me why Le Guin’s Earthsea series is considered a classic fantasy series. With this first book Le Guin demonstrates her subtle and important skill as a writer of serious fantasy. I’d like to point out that my copy of this book was found in the Young Adult section at a large chain bookstore. I remember reading somewhere that Le Guin wanted to write this first novel specifically for the younger market. I think she succeed but she also wrote one of those somewhat rare books that transcends age and can easily be enjoyed but the very young, the very old, and anybody in between. I look forward to revisiting the world of Earthsea with the second novel in the series (whenever I get a hold of a copy) as well as rereading A Wizard of Earthsea.