The Earthsea Cycle

"I’ve always been enormously fond of these books (although to be fair, I’ve not read the follow-up books after the initial trilogy, which I’ve heard good things about, and they’re in my to-read pile.) The first novel is really a wonder, because it is an epic fantasy in a very small book. Le Guin did something that we don’t see very much of in modern-day fiction, which is that she narrates her story. That’s actually a feature in a number of these books today, but especially Le Guin: she is telling you this story. Nowadays, the modern fashion is to delve deep inside the head of a character, and experience the story only through the eyes and feelings of one or more characters. We’ve lost that storyteller-narration to a large degree. Some people do it, of course, but it’s not as common as it used to be. Le Guin does it wonderfully, and it allows her to tell instead of show, at times, and thus tell an epic. She very deliberately set out to write a story that contrasts itself with The Lord of the Rings and some of these other well-known fantasy stories. The danger that our main character, Ged, is facing is not the great evil Lord who’s sitting on Mount Doom. It’s not an invading army. The opposition, the evil, comes from within the main character himself, and he has to grapple with that on a thematic and philosophical level. This is something that is true of all of these stories, but she just made it explicit, and it’s a wonderful metaphor for adolescence and coming of age: you must master yourself to become a functioning adult. And that is what Ged does. The setting is unique. It’s a world where the land masses are split up into all these tiny islands and archipelagos, and there are various interesting societies and magics throughout. It strikes hard. I’ve heard from a couple of modern readers that they had difficulty with the narration at first, until they understood what Le Guin was doing. But it is absolutely worth sticking with it, and I love it dearly. The second one has a different main character, although Ged comes back in (he later becomes known as Sparrowhawk). It’s a great examination of religion and cultish thinking, really well done. And then The Farthest Shore is essentially grappling with death. It’s an examination of mortality, and is incredibly well done again, because Le Guin knew what she was doing. She had things to say. She had a philosophical position, which I think is true of all of these authors: Eddison, Peake, Le Guin and, of course, Tolkien. They all had something to say. They’re not preaching, but their belief systems are guiding their narrative choices. As a trilogy, it’s not even that long with all three books combined. Yet it tells a complete story of starting as a child and becoming an adult who grapples with morality and mortality, with religion in there. I remember when Harry Potter came out and was growing in popularity, people were pointing toward A Wizard of Earthsea and saying that Rowling was drawing from it – because a young man goes to a wizarding school. That is not what The Wizard of Earthsea is about! The “school” part lasts such a short time in the book. It’s not about a wizard going to a wizard school; it’s about a young man loosing an evil upon the world, and having to grapple with that, and understand that the evil came from within him. I would also be remiss if I did not say that the magic system in The Wizard of Earthsea revolves around the concept of true names granting power over things, and I shamelessly drew from that for my own magic system. To be fair, it is from an older tradition in folklore and deep magic, but Le Guin was one of the ones who really got me thinking along those lines for my own books."