Other Wind

Rating:
Summary: Farther West Than West, Beyond The Land...
Review: Le Guin's latest addition to the Earthsea Cycle is truly a triumph. In the third book in this series, The Farthest Shore, Ged the Archmage sets out on a quest that ends in the restoration of the balance between life and death, the living and the dead... or so it seems. In the Other Wind, Le Guin portrays an unrestful land, where the dead start reaching over the wall that seperates them from the living. We are able to meet the characters from the other Earthsea books again, who have all matured and changed. In fact, Ged and Tenar are leading restful, almost ordinary lives at home. Some readers may find it unsettling to find their hero's lives so changed, and the land of Earthsea quivering on its foundations, but the conclusion of the novel brings together everything good about the books. With this final novel, Earthsea seems to be bound together again, unshakingly, although not without a few seperations... The song of the woman of Kemay presides, hauntingly, over the plotline of the book.

Farther west than west,
Beyond the land,
My people are dancing
On the other wind.

Rating:
Summary: Adequate, nothing more or less
Review: I know this will be an unpopular review. But new readers of Le Guin need to know what to read, and what to avoid until you're sure you love her work. One of the hallmarks of a good work of fiction, whether or not it's part of a series, is for the work to stand on its own right. You can't have a truly good book that only works because of books before or after it. Unfortunately, The Other Wind fails this test. Le Guin has all the elements for a fantastic climax to the world of Earthsea:

Lebannen learning how to govern, Ged dealing with his lack of power, Tenar taking a look at her role in life, and Tehanu finding out just what she is and can be. These four main characters, each the focus of one of the previous four books, are primed to deal with the exciting new problem of dragons and death (I'm keeping it simple as not to spoil the plot). And yet, the story is mostly rehash and continues to go over the same ground as in the previous books. Tehanu is the only character who undergoes much change, yet her feelings are maddeningly left for the reader to imagine in most scenes. The book is a think book, as opposed to an action book, and the blending of thought and deed was what made the other books of Earthsea so good. By itself, this book is mediocre fantasy. With the others, it completes the cycle, but just barely.

Rating:
Summary: Best reading since Earthsea and Lord of the Rings...
Review: Upon reading "Tales From Earthsea", I was, like many others, confused and distraught that Le Guin was changing the very heart of the world of Earthsea that we had loved for the last couple decades. But did that stop me from going to hear the author at a reading in Pasadena, CA, and eagerly purchasing the new book? Of course not! -- and well it didn't, for Le Guin has saved the best for last, and skillfully proven that "Tales" was a necessary addition to the Earthsea mythology.

First off, please, read the first four books before "The Other Wind". It will save much confusion. Next, as Le Guin said herself, the book doesn't have very many natural breaking points, so set aside a weekend to plow through the entire book, letting the tension in the book hit you deeply and quickly.

Le Guin's writing here seems effortless. The words are beautiful to read, silently or out loud. Her characters, from Ged (who is not the only central character), to Lebannen (a surprisingly honest look at a king), to Tenar (you can feel this woman's pain!), and all the rest are believable characters, though each would have been better served by a novel twice this long. But that's just the thing: Le Guin expertly chooses what to tell and what not to tell: the story moves along even with a relatively large cast of characters. And the story is wonderful, fulfilling the hopes of every ready who has spent countless hours in Earthsea.

This book is highly recommended, for anyone who loves mythology, who loves epic literature, or who simply wants a good read for a weekend. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: The Other Wind
Review: This latest Earthsea book is absolutely gorgeous, combining the trappings of heroic fantasy at their best with a philosophy that is simple yet utterly profound. Le Guin introduces some new, appealing characters, and characters from the earlier books appear and continue their development. As in earlier books, the truly frightening land of the dead presents the problem here. It turns out that the progress of souls to this barren, walled place is not inevitable... but I don't want to spoil the story. Le Guin's use of images reminiscent of those of the dead in the Epic of Gilgamesh is chillingly well done. Of course, dragons, and their true identities, are also central to the plot.

If the book has a flaw, it's that the climax passes a little quickly. I could have done with more tension, a longer sequence of climactic events, more description of the resolution and, overall, a longer book. Overall, though, this is very well crafted and serves as a refreshing example of an elderly author who has utterly avoided the repetitiveness and loss of vision of Old Author Disease.

Rating:
Summary: Ah, satisfaction...
Review: At the time when I read the first three books, I wondered, "how can she top that ending?" After I read Tehanu, I asked myself, "did anything actually happen in this novel? Why did she leave those loose ends?", not knowing that The Other Wind was another sequel. I waited anxiously to get ahold of it after I found out.

As disappointed as I was with Tehanu, I found this sequel absolutely stunning. I was enthralled with Alder's character, and much more satisfied with both Ged and Tenar's character development (LeGuin's portrayal of Ged in Tehanu left much to be desired). I anxiously read straight through in about three sittings, keeping myself up through four AM to finish it.

I do have to admit, I was a bit confused at the ending. There were still questions left unanswered. (Spoilers!) I found myself asking, if these boundaries were torn down, would wizards still keep their power? Would people still keep their true, hidden names? These questions are ones I'm still confused over, and want an answer to.

The best thing about this novel, I think (aside from how it tied the story together), is that it made me -think-. It brought up questions of life and death, of the foundation of another world and how LeGuin explores those things through the series.

Overall, a very satisfying conclusion to the series, especially after reading Tehanu. :) Not to mention, the last lines of the book gave me a good chuckle.

Rating:
Summary: Great start, but disappointing payoff
Review: Le Guin seems to have grown as a writer as she presents a richer, more complex world, while continuing to ground the story of EarthSea in Taoist ideas of harmony, balance and wholeness, and of course, Magic. Although there is great character development as the suspense builds, the story was ultimately disappointing. The major plotlines are hastily resolved in a few pages at the end! It was as though an ending had been slapped on a story meant to be two or three times longer!

Rating:
Summary: An enthralling meditation on death and fantasy
Review: Like all of Ursula LeGuin's novels--and especially her Earthsea series, which Amazon justly calls one of the two great fantasy series of the twentieth century (along with The Lord of the Rings)--this wonderful short novel is about something far more than the magic wielded by her characters or the dragons who fly on that other wind. Like all of the Earthsea stories (which include five novels and a collection of novellas), this book appears to be about Ged, the archmage who is known by his common name, Sparrowhawk; yet like all but the first, this book is actually focused on the journey of another character entirely. Alder, a simple village spellcaster, has lost his beloved wife. In his grief and against his will, he has found himself searching for her across the wall that marks the boundry between the living and the dead--the wall that only wizards can cross. In his struggles to come to peace, he journeys to Ged, as do Tehanu, a scarred young woman, and Tenar, the one-time priestess whom Ged rescued long ago and who has been attempting to live happily ever after. Also along for the ride is Lebannen, the young king, who is attempting to live up to the promise of his long-prophesied assumption of the throne. There are small moments of beauty and great moments of the sublime. Throughout, LeGuin explores the human fascination with and fear of death; she holds it up and looks at its different facets in the light like an archeologist studying the various sides of an ancient amulet.

This is not, I think, a young person's novel--the first three Earthsea books fill that niche brilliantly. Nor is it a good place to enter the series, not because the book itself lack in anything, but without the previous volumes, it is difficult to appreciate the richness of the world this modern master novelist has created. Most speculative fiction lives and dies on it's explorations of the motifs of the genre. LeGuin's best novels--and this is one of them--stand on their own as works of literary art and explorations of the human condition.

Rating:
Summary: Great, but confusing, unless you've read the previous books
Review: I loved this book, but when I finished it I went right away to reread "The Farthest Shore" and "Tehanu". It had been quite a while since I read them and neither book had really impressed me when I originally read them; my favorite Earthsea books were the first two. However, having read "The Other Wind" and armed with the knowledge of how things end, I was able to get a lot more out of "The Farthest Shore", ended up really enjoying the character of the young king so much more, knowing what he was going to become. I was also able to pick up the hints about his future kingship which I had missed the first time through.

Then I re-read "Tehanu", which had frankly baffled me the one previous time I read it. Knowing what I now know helped a lot in understanding what and who Tehanu really was, and all the dire hints about what her future would hold started to make sense.

Now I'm going to re-read "The Other Wind" and see if it makes even more sense. I agree up to a point with the other reviewer who mentioned that LeGuin seems to have reversed her position on the what afterlife is or should be. Unlike that reviewer, I think she did it very deftly, by making the creation of the Dry Land out to have been an unintended consequence of mankind's greed for material goods, a trap humans fell into but from which freedom is ultimately available. As a student of Buddhism, that all made perfect sense to me.

In this series, as in Marion Zimmer-Bradley's Darkover series, also written over many years, you can see the influence of changing times: a much stronger feminist perspective in the later books, and (in LeGuin's case) an eastern-inflected world view that has become much more prevalent in recent years.

Rating:
Summary: The writing
Review: This is the most beautifully written book I've come across lately. Leguin
has spent much of her time since the first Earthsea books in writing poetry and
gemlike short stories, and the result is that this book is truly moving and,
as always with Leguin, thought-provoking. It is rare to find a book in which
one can truly care about what happens to all of the characters.
The references to the previous parts of the story helped me, since it has
been a long time since I read about Tenar, Ged, Tehanu and Lebannen.
I think a reader new to Leguin will have no trouble in understanding the
backstory and will want to look up the earlier books after reading this one.

Rating:
Summary: The master doesn't know where to start
Review: I'll be straight with you, I did not finish this book. Why didn't I finish it? Because LeGuin burried me in backstory. There is a rule that every writer should know, "if that is the story you want to tell, tell it, don't refer back to it." Now I understand that this is just a follow up to her original trilogy, but she puts in so much narrative filled with explanations of the past that you begin to wonder what happened to the current story.

LeGuin is an amazing storyteller, and her ideas seemed to have a lot going for them. Her descriptions were vivid, and the storyline was good. Even the characters were intriguing, but like I said, she starts and stops the story so often that you eventually get tired of it and toss in the towel.

As a stand alone novel, I'd give it a thumbs down. Maybe I'll go back and read the trilogy and then be pulled through this novel, but somehow I'm doubting that.