https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2023/05/2023053-books-of-earthsea-complete.html ( )

I started this book 45 years ago and just finished it now!
I got myself this magnificent edition of all the novels, with a few short stories and the author's comments , to finally catch up from where I left off in Mrs. Cooper's primary school class.
At 10 I was avidly reading anything that looked interesting in the little book stand in the corner of the classroom. " The Wizard of Earthsea" blew my mind, but although in later years I re-read it I never read the others.
Funnily enough I'm glad I waited, because I can see now how the experience and wisdom of Ursula K. Le guin developed over a lifetime as she carried on writing of the world I loved so much.
I can see also how my taste in books and even my world-view was informed by that one book and how my philosophy and politics have evolved in parallel with the following books.
Thank-you Ursula. ( )

"RULE OF NAMES"
"WORD OF UNBINDING" | 2018-11

A tone or register distinguishes Le Guin from other fantasy tales, including Tolkien's. The stories are slight but not puff pieces. I found them most interesting as peeks into her magic system.

A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA | 2019-06

This opening Earthsea novel includes many of the tropes of a late twentieth-century fantasy quest book, one can tick them off fairly easily -- a chosen one spurned by his own, an archenemy, an urgent need to learn magic in order to overcome a threat, a journey, powerful weapons. Yet that's in retrospect. The overall feel is that it's nothing like a Tolkien knock-off, and that's all to the good.

Similarly, the School for Wizards at Roke predates Hogwarts and its many simulacra, and is nothing like it. I liked Le Guin's detail that the gate to Roke is of Horn and Ivory; somehow it fits with Earthsea's magic system, patterned as it is upon language and names. A refreshingly different take.

Thus far, Earthsea leaves an impression of wisdom over adventure, insight over drama.

The wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees. [58]

THE TOMBS OF ATUAN | 2020-03

Arguably, a story of Ged defeating the high priestess of ultimate evil ... but again, Le Guin undercuts the clichéd narrative of what that typically looks like, especially compared to so much genre fiction published around the same time and after. The priestess doesn't think of the Nameless Ones she serves as evil, though they are not benevolent; and, she upholds them because she's been brought up to do so. Ged is victorious only by persuading her, not defeating her in combat or by strategem. Finally, the micro-frame in which the tale unfolds has world-defining outcomes (peace to all of Earthsea based on the restored Ring of Erreth-Akbe), but these outcomes are quite literally outside the story itself and certainly outside the priestess's own awareness.

Tempting to see this as invoking the alchemical arts: as above, so below. Her reference to The Nameless Ones work as both an allusion to Lovecraft and a nod to Jungian shadow archetypes.

THE FARTHEST SHORE | 2020-05

The story takes place many years after Ged's visit to Atuan: Ged now is Archmage and seemingly in his 50s / 60s. Le Guin here offers her take on the theme of danger posed by a land and a people losing their magic (i.e. becoming a world like our own, as hinted in descriptions of Hort Town early in the tale). Ged has long suspected a change was underway, and Arren's news from the North persuades Ged it is time to take action. "This is not a righting of the Balance [in Nature], but an upsetting of it." [274]

Le Guin again undercuts the Tolkien-derived fantasy trope of ultimate evil. Cob is suspected all along to be the man behind the threat to Earthsea's waning magic, but Cob's role is never of central concern as if an uninteresting question for Ged & Arren; and then, when Cob appears, his entrance is sudden and just as suddenly he departs -- all of which merely confirms the suspicion Ged and Arren had all along. The central conflict is not of head-to-head combat, but something else entirely.

Cob attempts to set up a confrontation, as if he, too, only understands events in terms of these fantasy tropes and wants to uphold the Ultimate Evil persona, but largely both Ged and Arren ignore it, proceeding as if what's required of them largely excludes Cob altogether. Cob is not powerful so much as he broke something powerful, and holds everyone hostage while claiming to control that which he broke.

Despite the journeying by Ged & Arren here, readers still have not visited the center of Earthsea, not to mention whatever lands may exist beyond Earthsea itself.

Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. [274]

//

Jungian dynamic underlies the conflict, in the first three books. Le Guin seemingly has hit upon the approach of inner quests taking outer manifestations which are familiar to late twentieth-century readers, yet which undermine them precisely because that's not what these quests are about. It's not wrong to say they are fantasy: the outer events, after all, are true and occur, and the books can be appreciated for that. But the weight of the story doesn't come from these, as the weight of Tolkien's novels do.

The first book foretells that Ged will be Archmage; the second pretty much ignores that item. This, the third, opens by acknowledging that it has been done. Another undermining of the Tolkien-derivative approach to fantasy.

2021-07 | TEHANU

Le Guin deepens the emphasis on wisdom over spectacle; her writing of the novels appears to mimic the thematic progression from discovery of patriarchal orthodox society to an alterity-infused understanding of social good. LG's biography parallels the character arc of Tenan in not understanding fully this tension until personally experiencing "motherhood" and mundane life, its richness and challenges, and only then able to write of it. Even in earlier novels, Earthsea opened with a more orthodox outlook, an outlook increasingly questioned and tested as the story went on. In this way, the story cycle itself reflects an emerging understanding on part of author and character.

Tehanu opens just days or weeks after the end of The Farthest Shore; Le Guin states this explicitly in the Afterword.

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to read:
TALES FROM EARTHSEA
THE OTHER WIND
(STORIES & ESSAYS) ( )

Personally, I much prefer Le Guin's Hainish scifi over her Earthsea fantasy, but the later books do pick up the pace a bit. I'm still giving this volume 4**** because of its comprehensiveness – in addition to the six main titles, the supplementary stories, Le Guin's speech at Oxford, and the "Description of Earthsea" – along with the useful map and Charles Vess's illustrations. ( )

I’d been meaning to reread the Earthsea books for years, chiefly because I suspected I would get more out of Tehanu now than I had when I first read it back in the early 1990s. I’d been considering buying a copy of the Earthsea Quartet, as it’s normally sold here in the UK, but when I saw this new omnibus, containing all six Earthsea books – A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind – plus some additional material, and illustrated as well, I decided to get myself a copy. The problem with ominbuses – omnibi? omnibodes? – however, for those of us who track our reading – and this is a vitally important question – is: does it count as a single book, or do you count the individual volumes it contains? So, is The Books of Earthsea one book read, or is it six books read? The Books of Earthsea makes it a little awkward as it contains material not previously collected, but the point is still valid. I chose to record each of the six volumes on my Goodreads reading challenge, if only so I could make my 140 books read target, which I have well overshot, but I’ve marked it as a single book in my own personal record of books read. As for the contents… do I really need to describe them? The first three books were more male-centric than I’d remembered – an issue Le Guin herself was aware of, and addressed in later books and stories, although the world-building required some retconning and twisting out of shape to make it work. The Tombs of Atuan was better than I had remembered and The Farthest Shore a bit duller. Tehanu I really liked this time around. Its plot felt a little uneven, with everything seemingly wrapped up in the last few pages of the book, but that seemed like a fault with all five of the novels in the series. Tales from Earthsea was entirely new to me, and the stories were good. The Other Wind was a little too obvious in places – I mean, who thought the king and princess would not end up together? And again, the plot seemed wrapped up a little too quickly and a little easily. But these are germinal works (not seminal, obvs), and read in sequence form an important dialogue with the fantasy genre. The individual books should certainly never be read in seclusion. Just reading A Wizard of Earthsea would be completely missing the point of Earthsea. On the other hand, this is a book for people with strong arms, as it’s not a comfortable weight to read easily. And the illustrations didn’t work at all for me. I’d sooner they hadn’t been there. But it’s definitely worth getting hold of a copy of this book. ( )