A superb four-part
fantasy, comparable with the work of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the
“Earthsea” books follow the fortunes of the wizard Ged from his
childhood to an age where magic is giving way to evil. As a young
dragonlord, Ged, whose use-name is Sparrowhawk, is sent to the island
of Roke to learn the true way of magic. A natural magician, Ged
becomes an Archmage and helps the High Priestess Tenar escape from
the labyrinth of darkness. But as the years pass, true magic and
ancient ways are forced to submit to the powers of evil and death.
Goodreads description
I managed to not read
Ursula Le Guin’s books as a child and a teenager. It was not until
my student son read The Wizard of Earthsea and told
me that I would love it, that at last I settled down with the book.He
was right, I loved it and all the other Earthsea books. Why, oh why
did I wait so long? Maybe because I wrongly thought of them as
children’s books. They can be read by children, but an adult reader
will get so much more from Le Guin’s writings. What makes Le Guin
so special?Le Guin has a genius for world creation – Earthsea
feels like somewhere I know and will know. Sometimes, as with my own
fictional worlds, I come upon a place in this world which is
Earthsea. Of course every reader will have a different Earthsea; Le
Guin is brilliant at giving enough but not too much description so
that we each can see our own vision. The same is true of the
descriptions of her characters. I have an image of each, but what I
remember tends not to be their physical appearance, but their
thoughts, motives, loves and fears. For all Le Guin’s genius in
world-making, she writes about humanity.
I love the way she is
able to create fantastic worlds which allow her to explore big
issues. In the Wizard of Earthsea, the first Earthsea
book, the young hero makes an error of judgement and must face the
consequences. In Jungian psychology all that we dislike and repress
about ourselves is called our shadow. In order to be fully mature we
must turn, face it and name it, something most of us fail to do. This
happens quite literally in the Wizard of Earthsea. There
are other similarly important themes in her other books.I had been a
poet, playing with symbols and metaphors. Le Guin showed me that this
was possible in a novel too and that it was possible to do this
whilst telling a good story.
Ursula Le Guin inspired
me to start writing novels. And she even provided the best book I
know on writing – Steering the Craft.
This
morning my new book Love of Shadows had its first
review on Amazon and
Goodreads. In it the reviewer says that she thought the series
“similar to Ursula Le Guin’s books set in the fictional country
of Orsinia”. I could not be more honoured by a comparison.
