Rating: 
Summary: "Still, Leagues Beyond Those Leagues, There Is More Sea"
Review: Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard Of Earthsea (1968) is one of the finest coming of age novels written during the 20th Century. Grim and unsparing in its depiction of the harshness of existence, the book is nonetheless incredibly wise and beautiful, and should be read by audiences of all ages and backgrounds. With the exception of Tolkien's magnum opus, critics have called Le Guin's initial three Earthsea books the greatest fantasy novels ever written; but the simple truth is that Le Guin's trilogy surpasses Tolkien's achievement, since, without damaging the integrity of her fantasy world, Le Guin infuses her work with ample deep truths that are applicable to all individuals, all times, and all cultures. A Wizard Of Earthsea is the story of Ged, called Sparrowhawk, a young Healthcliffian loner who unwittingly discovers that he has an innate potential for extraordinary magical power. Leaving Gont, the gray, windswept island of his birth to seek training on Roke, the island of wizards, the rough - hewn, sensitive boy foolishly accepts a dare from an envious senior comrade, and thus brings an irrevocable disaster down upon his head. The balance of A Wizard Of Earthsea concerns Ged's comfortless flight from the horror he has raised, as his careless action is one so terrible that its resolution is beyond the power of the even the greatest of Roke's wizards. Earthsea's far - dwelling dragons, of unsurpassable age, erudition, and power, can likewise do nothing to buttress or assist him. Physically and psychically scarred and exiled from mankind by the singularity of his predicament, Ged courageously and responsibly accepts his fate. Accompanied only by a small shrew - like animal that nests in his hood, Ged takes to Earthsea's endless oceans and becomes both the hunted and the hunter of the black, faceless, and unknowable parasite he has unleashed. The fantasy also astutely reflects the psychological truth that archetypal "monsters" are often, if not always, disenfranchised, wounded, and needy remnants of the very individuals and societies they ostensibly assault and violate. Ged is clearly a Christ figure (Ged / God) and an everyman, and it is to Le Guin's great credit that she conveys both the existential nature of his character and his inexorable destiny in a manner in which the reader can readily identify. Few novels of any genre communicate what it is to be young, ignorant of self - knowledge, misunderstood, emotionally isolated, guilty, and bearing up resourcefully under a terrible burden as powerfully as A Wizard Of Earthsea. As presented, Le Guin's fantasy world is a starkly romantic, autumnal, pre - industrial land of innumerable small islands set in an endless gray sea. The author's sparse, plain - spoken, and nuanced prose combines the stern, unyielding strength of Hilda Doolittle's early Imagist poetry with the psychological profundity of Jung's Memories, Dreams, And Reflections (1961) or Collected Letters (1973). Never less than insightful, A Wizard Of Earthsea is a sad, dynamic novel imbued with the genuine power to educate and inspire its audience about the fundamental difficulties inherent in living.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, But Not Great
Review: I have say I was not so impressed with A Wizard of Earthsea. Reading the editors' reviews of the book on Amazon, they compare it glowingly to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but I just don't see it. Granted this is only the first book, and I will likely read the second, but it certainly was not the caliber of Tolkien. The book is rather choppy and written in a sort of third person narrative that gets annoying after time. I also felt the plot and writing were rather immature. This was one of Le Guin's early works, but it still needed a good editor. I can see, however, why The SciFi Channel has opted to make it into a mini-series, the story is simple high fantasy -- nothing too difficult, nothing too mind boggling. It will probably do well.
Rating: 
Summary: Enchanting but significantly flawed.
Review: For this book Ursula le Guinn dreams up an altogether imaginary world frequented by wizards and dragons (though we are spared here from trolls, dwarves, elves and hobbits but it's the first in a tetralogy so I don't know yet if that will last.) The story she places in this setting concerns the first twenty years in the life of a young wizard by the name of Ged. Ged is going to be just the best wizard around and, as a boy, he is already highly precocious. And that is his main problem as it means he is still just a boy when he starts mucking around with the spell for raising the dead which, unlike this book, is definitely not suitable for readers of 12 and up. Goaded into trying it out by a nasty outbreak of schoolboy rivalry, he summons, on p. 61 something really quite nasty which most of the remaining 120 pages are an account of his attempt, first to escape, then somehow to defeat. It is not a masterpiece. The writing style is rather irritating, le Guinn favouring an over-heightened style with a certain rather phoney archaism of both grammar and diction ("Grim it stood over the northern cliffs, grey were the clouds over the seas of winter..." (p. 46)). And she breathes less life into her characters than one might have wished: sometimes I struggled to be that interested in Ged. Which leaves it puzzling why the book has such a power to fascinate. For my money, it's the maps. Dreaming up a whole imaginary world, when done with a certain thoroughness and inventiveness, speaks irresistible to our desire for exploration; and that's just what we do here, with Ged, who spends almost the whole book travelling around this strange watery world where there are no continents, only islands. So that when, towards the end, Ged, imagining he will soon be dead, bewails the places he has never been (p. 68: "I wish I could have seen all the cities of the Archipelago..."), a spell has been woven sufficient for the reader to share his frustration. So that, for all the books flaws, it may be hard not to read the sequels sometime.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, but could have been much better.
Review: I read "A Wizard of Earthsea" about twenty or twenty-five years ago and had completely forgot the tale. However, last week I was in search for something to read, and pulled this paperback off my bookshelf. So here is my fresh perspective having just completed this story moments ago: Note: there are some plot spoilers in my review. First, I could not believe the amount of narrative LeGuin used in this book. She writes about lot of things rather than shows the reader how it has happened (or is happening) as the story unfolds. Now, to be fair, LeGuin does this with very beautiful and poetic language, of which I was able to appreciate and admire, but it is narrative just the same. If you cannot stand this style, I expect you will have a hard time with this book. The first chapter goes contains (mostly) fifteen pages of exposition, and breaks into short dialogue less than 20 times. The narrative usually stays out of the thoughts of the characters and remains rather distant. Many of the remaining chapters follow this model. I can understand that LeGuin was attempting to generate a feeling of ancient lore, since use of her wonderful narrative voice adds to that overall effect, but it make this book read less like a novel and much more like a short section of Tolkien's Silmarillion; a book that was never intended to be read as a novel but more as a history of ancient lore in a style that resembles parts of the Bible. The narrator's voice also avoids deep characterization - seldom do we fully appreciate the thoughts and the full motivations of most of the people that inhabit Earthsea. Due to this style, the only chapters that were very interesting and entertaining to me were Chapters Two through Four - the part of the story in which Ged becomes apprentice to the Mage Ogion and later leaves him to train on the island of Roke in a school for Wizards. In these chapters there is quite a bit of dialogue and interesting interplay between characters. Particularly, there is an intense and interesting wizardly rivalry between Ged (a poor boy raised in poverty) and an older student named Jasper (raised in privilege and wealth) [1]. It is from this contest of wills that brings forth the evil shadow that occupies Ged for the remaining chapters of the novel. It is too bad that LeGuin completely drops this Ged-Jasper conflict utterly once the shadow is let loose on the world, as this was one of the best parts of the story. There is what should have been an interesting "side trip" in chapter six and seven. LeGuin has Ged venture to a land called Osskil in search of a way to defeat his enemy. Again, here are two more chapters of the story that had great potential, conflict, and mystery that ends abruptly for Ged, who flees without fully understanding what has happened or what powers have contrived to entrap him. The reader may also be likewise disappointed as LeGuin writes the set up very well, and the mystery of the stone is well presented, but the sudden flight ruins the suspense. Ged and the reader do not learn enough through this encounter. Did Ged's shadow drive him to Osskil or did the spirit in the stone pull him there? Did the shadow serve the stone or are they the same; are they part of the same darkness? How and why did this happen? Unfortunately, Ged makes a couple of assumptions ex-post-facto, but it is not satisfying or critical to the plot. The remaining chapters describe conflict, between Ged and the evil shadow released (or created?) by Ged's foolish one-upmanship of Jasper at the wizard school. Long before the end of the book it is quite clear as to how, exactly, Ged would manage to defeat this thing. The reader also will likely understand exactly what the shadow represents as well -again this realization will likely happen before the final chapter. Overall, I think this book is entertaining enough for those that are not put-off by such a narrative style, but it certainly pales in comparison to Tolkien, of which it is constantly compared. There is no valid comparison in A Wizard of Earthsea the rich characterization and sheer storytelling ability contained within The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. As I said earlier, if this work is fairly compared to a style of Tolkien, then it must be compared only to a chapter or section the massive Silmarillion: a collection of unfinished writings and narrative history.
Rating:
Summary: Ursula Le Guin - A wizard in her own right
Review: This being my first Ursula LeGuin book, I wanted to finally understand the mystique surrounding this Portland based (according to her 1968 bio) author. Any friend of Portland, Oregon is a friend of mine. At first, "A Wizard of Earthsea" is a little slow going. Beginning the book I was overeager, unfortunately, to lump LeGuin into that much scoffed at group of Tolkein wannabees. Here we had all the makings of a different world with the usual cadre of Anglo-European mythological people and creatures. LeGuin's talent isn't a sparkling wit or a magnificent explosion of plot. But it has a slow burn that ever so gradually makes it so that the reader cannot help but want to know more. Reading further, I found that my Tolkein based assumption was farther off the mark than I'd anticipated. Here we have a world where magic is almost a science. Unlike Harry Potter or Gandolph, when Ged (the hero of this tale) weaves a spell it requires making calculations, assumptions, and particulars about the objects he enchants. He must know the names of the objects he is influencing. In many ways, the spells in this book are like long written thesis. They require research and patience. The people also have some significant differences from those found in other tales as well. For one thing, they're not all white. Remember all the black people in the Lord of the Rings saga? No? How about Dean Thomas from Harry Potter (a character that in the original British editions was never declared black)? With few exceptions (Nancy Farmer being the greatest exception of them all) the world of fantasy is white white white. Unless of course you count the horridly stereotyped cannibals in Edward Eagar and E. Nesbit's fantasies, of course. But what was never made fully clear to me until now is that the protagonist of "A Wizard of Earthsea" is not white. Nor is his companion, Vetch. Nor, to be honest, most of the characters in the book. No big show is made of this fact. LeGuin is too much the lady to ever say loudly, "Hey look! I wrote a book in 1968 about a wizard that isn't white and I never made a big deal about it!" But it's true.
Now, admittedly there is a significant lack of one particular group in this book. Women. If women in "A Wizard of Earthsea" have the ability to work their own brand of magic they're either labeled witches or evil sorceresses. And this from a female author? So I cannot wholeheartedly give it five stars. Just the same, on the whole this book deserves its praise (a fact that fills me with amazement). For someone who was fully ready to mock and downplay the book's achievements, I say here and now that it is worth reading by anyone who thinks they have some sort of a grasp on the kiddie lit fantasy scene. Two thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: A classic well worth re-reading
Review: This book captivated me when I was in middle school, and led me to finish the (then) trilogy. It has become one of my favorite books of all time - despite a regular diet of faster-paced science fiction, etc when I was younger. One of the things that has impressed me more as I re-read it as an adult is that, while this is a story of Ged growing up (somewhat parallel to the Harry Potter series), Ged is not struggling so much with an external evil but with the different parts of himself that he must master. Altogether a valuable lesson for young readers. I also agree with another reviewer about the treatment of women in the early Earthsea books, but that is something the author has rectified in her more recent Earthsea additons (and has done so with the perceptiveness that must stem from her own life changes in the intervening 30 years). My only regret is that recent paperback editions either omit the maps and woodcut illustrations entirely, or reproduce them in a smudged form. My first copy (an Atheneum hardcover from 1968) was a beautiful book. Altogether, I cannot recommend it too highly.
Rating:
Summary: A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA
Review: A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA BOOK IS REALLY INTERESTING. IT IS FULL OF ADVENTURES AND EXITEMENT. THIS BOOK CAN MAKE YOUR IMAGINATION RUN KIND OF WILD. IT IS REALLY EXITING BECAUSE GED IS STRUGGLRILNG ALOT TO GET RID OF THE SADOW THAT HAS BEEN FOLLOWING HIM. DURING THE STORY HE GOES THROUG A REALLY BIG CHANGE IN HIS LIFE. HE BECOMES ONE OF THE GREATEST SORCEROUS IN EARTHSEA. THE SADOW THAT IS FOLOWING HIM AND WANTS TO TAKE HIS POWER AWAY. THIS BOOK IS REALLY COOL TO JUST READ AND HAVE A GOOD AND SAD TIME AT THE SAME TIME.
BY: CLAUDIA U.
Rating:
Summary: book is great, but 'ware the "library binding"...
Review: I purchased the library binding as I wanted to give it as a gift in hardcover. Sadly, quality is sinking in this country, bit by bit...the paper is dingy, dim recycled newsprint, almost Soviet in quality, and will probably yellow in a few years. Avoid the library binding. I returned it. The book, of course, is great.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect fantasy novel
Review: I've read this book four times--once every decade or so since I was a young teen. Every time I've read it I've been blown away in a different way. When I was thirteen, I was blown away by the thrilling adventure yarn that LeGuin weaves. When I was in my twenties, I was fascinated by the spare, beautiful language and imagery she engages. At thirty, I had just watched Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth, and became fascinated by the way in which LeGuin spins out a tale that follow the structures of the Hero's Journey so perfectly. Now I am amazed by the way in which, with characteristic vision, LeGuin uses a deceptively simple story to delve into some extremely deep philosophical issues. I must be getting old!
This book, the first in the Earthsea series that amazon.com has justly called one of the two most important fanstasy series of the twentieth century (the other being Tolkien's Lord of the Rings), follows the early life of a young sorcerer named Ged. Going by the common name of Sparrowhawk (for in Earthsea, true names have great power), he discovers his own magical ability when he is only a boy. He is trained, first by a local wizard named Ogion the Silent, and then at the great wizard school on the island of Roke. While truly coming into his power there, like another young wizard schoolboy in literature, he gets carried away with his own ability and unleashes something evil into the world. The rest of the novel is spent following Ged's attempts to escape and then to confront this evil--learning its name.
The story is thrilling, the language is beautiful, the structure is mythic and--as with most of LeGuin's writing--the author is grappling with issues far deeper than the typical sword and sorcery novel. What more could one ask for?
Rating:
Summary: it was...okay
Review: A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin This is a story of a young boy named Sparrowhawk and how he grows into the man (and wizard) that he will become. Sparrowhawk begins as a young goat herder on the island of Gont. He is being trained by a witch there, but when he uses his powers to defend his island from attack, he attracts the notice of a powerful wizard named Ogion. Ogion tells Sparrowhawk that his true name is Ged. (a true name holds great power in Earthsea for it permits the speaker power over the named) and takes him on as an apprentice. Ged learns quickly and is reckless in both his learning of magic as well as his application of magic, and this eventually gets him in trouble. Ged desires more knowledge and goes to the school at Roke. It is here that Ged truly excels, but it is also at Roke that he casts a spell that calls a shade (best description of it without spoiling it) that is much stronger than Ged. This begins the quest portion of the book as Ged both flees from the shade and later confronts it (that's not a spoiler, you had to know it's coming). There is magic use, a really nice fight against dragons, and some adventure. Overall, I wasn't too excited about this book. I know it is a classic in the fantasy field, but it was a little slower and less interesting than I had hoped. It was well written, certainly, but it also lacked a little something to make me want to keep turning the pages. Honestly, I didn't care what happened to Sparrowhawk. And so, I can't really recommend this book.
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