10 June 2013

A Visit to Earthsea, Part I: A Wizard of Earthsea

Mass market paperback, 198 pages
Published 2004 (originally 1968)
Acquired November 2007
Read September 2012
A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Considering my love of Le Guin's sf, which I first encountered back in 2003 or so, it baffles understanding that it took me nine years to get around to reading her fantasy. But here it is. It is simpler than her sf is, very much a bildungsroman of a very uncomplicated sort, I think. That doesn't stop it from being good, but one ends up suspecting that the Le Guin who gave us The Left Hand of Darkness could have given us something a little more striking than this. We don't get into Ged's head the extent to which we do other Le Guin protagonists.

All that said, Earthsea is of course an awesome and well-delineated environment, and the dark climax of the novel is fantastic.

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