This is a strange book to me because on the one hand I know that, while it’s not entirely a new foray into a newish genre, it’s something of an early effort for Ursula K Le Guin, but it’s not a profound extension of the genre, and in fact, it’s even a solidly good novel. It’s good, and it’s fine. But it’s also an oddly out of balance book. It’s short. It feels short when you look at it and hold it, but it also […]
The sort of book I would have liked more had I read it 20 years ago
I’m giving this book 3 stars, and I feel guilty about it. I feel guilty because I know it’s a classic, because it’s 50 years old and still going strong, because the writing is really beautiful, and because I KNOW that if I had read this 15-20 years ago, I would have adored it. 8-13 year old me, who reread books about Narnia and Prydain and various retellings of King Arthur legends year after year (and read a crapload of mediocre Catholic historical fiction in the […]
Life’s too short to read stories without well-written female characters
I feel a little bad calling one of Le Guin’s books meh, but A Wizard of Earthsea was really only so-so for me. I bumped it up a little in the rating purely due to how groundbreaking the book must have been in 1968 when it was released. This series influenced many famous authors and for good reason. A wizard protagonist with dark skin? A school for wizards? An epic bildungsroman featuring a somewhat unlikeable character? All those things should be considered when evaluating this […]
“Bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky”
After taking on the rather draining Tiptree anthology, I wanted to rest my heart and mind and spirit. So I am revisiting one of my most cherished treasures: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle. I was 10 or 12 when I discovered this series, and I fell precipitously in love with it. It was my gateway drug to the world of fantasy and SF. A Wizard of Earthsea is, at heart, a classic story of a Young Wizard who Comes Of Age And Goes On […]