Earthsea cycle: a review
Filed under Reviews on September 26, 2005
Tagged: books, Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
In my continued quest to read the classics, I next chose Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books. Ms. Le Guin is a local author (she lives somewhere just across the river from me) and the first two books of the Earthsea Cycle–Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Atuan–were made into a miniseries on the SciFi Channel.
Unfortunately, I saw the miniseries first. Fortunately, the differences were dramatic enough that I didn’t feel like the story had been spoiled. The first book, Wizard of Earthsea, left me wanting.
Le Guin’s writing has been described as sparse. The brevity of the first two books attests to that. Sparse is not necessarily a bad thing, though. Le Guin uses strong language that does not require a lot of description to evoke images. Still, Wizard at times was more telling than showing. I think this had to do with both the scope of the world Le Guin was introducing and the scope of the events of the story. It was just too much for the word count, in my opinion.
I enjoyed Tombs much more. I think the type of story fit Le Guin’s style better. Where Wizard was somewhat epic in scope, Tombs was the personal story of a young priestess. The magic and exotic locales took a backseat to Arha/Tenar’s spiritual struggle. The story may have resonated more with me because I feel it mirrored the tone my current writing is taking.
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September 26th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Tombs is my favorite of the books. My only problem with it (when I was a fannish teenager) is that Ged showed up so late. After getting acquainted with him in Wizard of Earthsea I was wondering where he went.
September 28th, 2005 at 1:44 am
I’ve never read the Earthsea books… and maybe I should, from the looks of this…
My sole experience with Le Guin’s work, and the one that kinda put me off the idea of investigating her stories further, was ‘Left Hand of Darkness’. It was just a little bizarre and confusing for me. Of course, I was rather younger at the time, but I was also reading Asimov, Clarke, E E ‘Doc’ Smith, sci-fi anthologies, and most of it wasn’t too hard to understand….
September 28th, 2005 at 7:49 am
We had a couple of her books when I was a kid: Eye of the Heron and Left Hand of Darkness, I believe. Never read either.
It’s funny how much age and life experience affect the impact stories have on us. I read David Eddings’ Belgariad in junior high and just ate it up. I read it again post-high school and found it less to my liking.