A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin | 1968 | Bantam Books | Paperback $8.99
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death’s threshold to restore the balance.
I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about this story, which is too bad because I think that it really does deserve all the praise it has garnered over the years. This brief review is due to a lack of extreme feeling and ineloquence on my part rather than to a lack of merit on the part of the book.
This is a tight little character- and lesson-focused fantasy in what I think of as the “old style” — lots of flowery, nearly poetic language; a clear philosophical point; and an air of serious literature, something to be thoughtfully savored.
I was somehow reminded of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, both series that I loved as a kid (and still do). This book, like those, seems to be written primarily for older children with the intention of delivering difficult life lessons disguised — successfully, actually — as fantastic adventures.
It isn’t that children are too stupid to know how to figure out the moral of a story. No, it’s just that if the plot is paced well and the characters are sympathetic and the prose is nearly perfectly sculpted, it doesn’t feel so much like the kind of “morality bludgeoning” that can ruin an otherwise lovely tale.
I do wish I’d read this book as a young teen. It’s exactly the sort of thing that I’d have devoured over and over again. After all, the whole point of the story is self-discovery and defeating one’s own demons, which are exactly the sorts of books that I couldn’t get enough of at that age.
Links:
- Official website of Ursula K. Le Guin
- Le Guin’s interview with Wired
- Excerpts from Le Guin’s The Paris Review interview at Tor
Publication information: Le Guin, Ursula K. A Wizard of Earthsea. New York: Bantam, 1980. Print.
Source: Personal library.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
