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Summary: magic between the pages
Review: Although often described as a childrens book, A wizard of Earthsea should be read by people of any age, and any who read it will be changed by the experience. Its one of those books that inspires and changes your entire perspective on life. Ged, whose humble beginnings as a goatherder fail to deter his destiny as a Wizard, unleases a terrible evil while training to be a Wizard on the island of Roke. What follows is a journey that changes Ged's life forever. Chased and persued within an inch of his life, Ged soon becomes a hunter, learning about wisdom, power and ultimately himself along the way. There is magic in the pages of this book, and it definitely does not deserve to be dissmissed as a childrens book, although the kids will enjoy it immensely.
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Summary: A Classic Young-Adult Fantasy Novel
Review: I first read this book as a teenager, and recently re-read it as an adult. The book has held up wonderfully! The prose is crisp and clear, the story compelling, and the characters interesting. Sparrowhawk/Ged is a wonderful apprentice-hero...he has to learn not only how to be a wizard (hmmm, a school for wizards...sound familiar?), but more importantly, he has to learn how to become a hero. That quest, which is much more important than any of the steps he takes to achieve it, is the true focus of the book. A coming of age stories with magic, dragons and fearsome monsters...what more could you ask for?
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Summary: Bedazzled
Review: Hallo fantasy lovers,I am a girl from a Eastern Europe, Latvia, and in love with le Guin's books. I have read the Earthsea trilogy, that's the only of her books that has been translated in my language, but English books are unfortunately hardly available here. Yet I would like so much to read them in original... I think English is much more appropriate language for tales and fantasy... and of course, to possess them... But they are long since out of print in Latvia. Now they are publishing mostly trash that I do not read.I could, of course, have the books through Internet but there's a problem that my student's scholarship does not quite coincide with the normal Western prices. ( If somebody's interested, the scholarship for excellent marks is around 15 dollars a month - is it not ridiculous?). That's why I am writing this review hoping to find a friendly readerly heart. Is there anybody out there who has has got a spare copy of le Guin' s works that he/she could share? It can be old and suffered, of course. I only want to read them desperately. If there's a kind soul that thinks of a possibility to help me, my email address is brr81@hotmail.com I would really be most thankful, indeed, for any kind of interest in my plea. Excuse for my poor English. being bedazzled by the Earthsea world, yours Barbala
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Summary: A BAD book
Review: This book may have had a good moral but I think it couldv'e turned out a lot better if it wasn't so borring. I had to read this in school, and not one of my classmates liked it.
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Summary: Quietly beautiful
Review: Rarely that one finds a book so simply written, yet so beautiful. The characters are not larger than life. A wonderful few hours of escaping reality. A very enjoyable read.
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Summary: Fantastic fantasy...
Review: Let me start by saying that I'm 36 years old and have been a voracious reader since early childhood. That said, I still love the "Wizard of Earthsea" series. These books (especially the first and the third) really have something for everyone... children, teenagers and adults alike. LeGuin is a master at alliteration (if you don't know what that is, look it up), which gives every sentence a dreamlike, poetic quality. These books are not "adrenaline pumpers" but mature, thoughtful high fantasy written in the spare but beautifully poetic style of Hemingway. I'm very pleased to see that the Earthsea series is still being introduced to kids and teens these days.
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Summary: Jung, Myth and Ursula LeGuin
Review: Ursula Le Guin is the daughter of Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist, and Theodora Kroeber, a psychologist and writer. It's easy and accurate to say that her parents' interests inform her brilliant writing, and that cultural anthrpology and Jungian psychology are at the core of Wizard of Earthsea and its three sequels. But the book isn't a treatise. It's a wonderful, well-told story of a young man, Ged, coming of age in a world where words can have the power of magic and dragons are as real as earthquakes. There is nothing didactic about this story; Le Guin's writing is compelling and her characters are vivid: Ogion, the Mage of Silence, whose word had stilled an earthquake; Vetch, who helps Ged on a deadly quest for no reason but friendship; Murre, Vetch's sister; Yevaud, the dragon of Pendor; and Skiorh, possessed by a gebbeth. Earthsea doesn't exist in a vacuum. Le Guin constructs a deep and textured history, and her characters act in ways that are consistent with that world. She manages the trick of writing a mythic tale without falling into the traps and foibles of sounding like you are trying. The climax is straight from Carl Jung, but you don't need to know Carl Jung from Steve Young to appreciate it. From time to time, religious groups call for this book to be banned from school libraries, claiming it promotes witchcraft. Nonsense. This is a book every teenager should read. It speaks to self-understanding, nothing more. And some feminists criticize Le Guin because Ged is a male character. Again, nonsense, Ged is an archetype, and his gender matters not at all. This is an important book. It's also terrific fun. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Magnificent piece of literary art
Review: It seems wholly appropriate that a work so well crafted, in which the words used are so perfect, should embrace as its central theme the power of words. In the land of Earthsea, magic is inexorably tied to the true name of a thing. Potential, in and of itself, can do nothing without knowledge. It is the two together that enable magic. Wizards spend their lives learning true names, without which, they can only perform charms and tricks. This book is a magnificent piece of literary art. It works on so many levels that one can only marvel at the facility with which disparate pieces of such varying sizes and shapes are moulded into a coherent whole. The result is a masterpiece. One level is dedicated to children. It is an adventure story of inner courage and strength of character. Another level is dedicated to young adults. It is a story of a boy's journey into manhood and the conquest of self-limitation. The deepest level is also the most mature. It is a philosophical rumination on the balance of life. There is more than the one type of magic here - the author submerges her themes into the story so naturally, that one is never aware of her literary magic at work. For example, she does not stretch for the philosophical. She eases into it, without hurry or seeming care. It is only afterward that one becomes aware of having experienced something profound. Another sample; this one a taste of the writer's lyricism: "But Ged went on, falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought, over the Osskil Sea and eastward into the wind of winter and the night." The gift for vivid similes, the cadence of the sentence, the sheer potency in the words, all combine to weave a literary spell that surpasses any magic present in the story. This is a great gift, and not even the greatest. The greatest gift that this or any writer can give to her reader is that of self-discovery. In this work, as in each of the subsequent two, Le Guin crafts such a discovery so perfectly, that her work is elevated into literature. This is one of those books that change lives. Had she written nothing else, the world would owe Ursula K. Le Guin an immeasurable debt of gratitude for writing just this one.
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Summary: A Small, But Perfect, Gem
Review: When I was about 7, my uncle gave the Earthsea Trilogy to my mother (a reading teacher) for her students to read. I remember reading a couple of chapters of one of them (Tombs of Atuan, I think) and finding it very exciting and mysterious, but also a little hard to understand (probably because I was starting in the middle of the series and because I was 7). Since then, I have often wanted to read the trilogy, but I had difficulty finding the books, which were out of print for most of the 1980s. I also was a little turned off because many people classify the trilogy as "young adult fiction," probably because they are relatively short. I just finished a Wizard of Earthsea and I was surprised to find that it was one of the best fantasy book that I have ever read. Le Guin's narrative style in this book (which differs greatly from "Left Hand of Darkness" and its progeny--a style that I found to be a little plodding and self-indulgent) is very lean, almost minimalist. In this respect it reminds me of Michael Moorcock's Elric series. Unlike Moorcock, however, Le Guin conveys a rich emotional life for her characters. (This is not a criticism of Morcock, I think that he intentionally meant for the characters to remain somewhat distant and enigmatic--making them more like characters of myth and legend). The back of the edition that I read claims that Le Guin has dethroned Tolkien as the ruler of epic fantasy. I wouldn't go that far. But she certainly deserves share the upper eschelon of fantasy writers with Tolkien and a very few other authors.
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Summary: Wonderful book
Review: I loved this book and the two that follow. I have recommended these books to several people and have been gratified by their reactions. I will never be far from them.
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