opportunerain's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
midnarose's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
3.5 stars
This was a collection of short stories and novellas in the world of earthsea
the stories take place before the main series, during the main series and before the next/ last book to set up some of the plot and characters for the last book.
In Ursula's own forward she recommends reading this collection after the other books but before the last , and after reading them i can see why , each story is like a small piece of a puzzle that gives context to the setting and world for the last book. even the stories that are during or before the main series i feel you appreciate more reading them after.
the first novella is how Roak school of wizardry came to be
the second a short story of a boy deciding what he wants to be ; a wizard , a musician , a business man?
the third is a short story of a minor side character mention in the main series - on how a wizard stopped a earthquake
the forth short story is about a wizard from roke who dabbled in dark magic
lastly we have a novella of what happened at roke once sparrow hawk was gone - about a girl who wants to learn but can't because shes not a boy- because roke has forgotten that both women and men built the school of roke.
the book also contains a "description of earthsea" at the end which is like a history glossary to explain historical people, places and dragons of earthsea.
I look forward to reading the last book of this epic world
This was a collection of short stories and novellas in the world of earthsea
the stories take place before the main series, during the main series and before the next/ last book to set up some of the plot and characters for the last book.
In Ursula's own forward she recommends reading this collection after the other books but before the last , and after reading them i can see why , each story is like a small piece of a puzzle that gives context to the setting and world for the last book. even the stories that are during or before the main series i feel you appreciate more reading them after.
the first novella is how Roak school of wizardry came to be
the second a short story of a boy deciding what he wants to be ; a wizard , a musician , a business man?
the third is a short story of a minor side character mention in the main series - on how a wizard stopped a earthquake
the forth short story is about a wizard from roke who dabbled in dark magic
lastly we have a novella of what happened at roke once sparrow hawk was gone - about a girl who wants to learn but can't because shes not a boy- because roke has forgotten that both women and men built the school of roke.
the book also contains a "description of earthsea" at the end which is like a history glossary to explain historical people, places and dragons of earthsea.
I look forward to reading the last book of this epic world
adashske's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
applequinn's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
carboard_triptych's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.25
readvin's review against another edition
4.0
Lite jobbig att läsa då det är en novellsamling, kände inte att jag levde in riktigt så mycket som jag brukar göra i hennes andra böcker. Ändå trevlig läsning och världsbyggande
cryo_guy's review against another edition
5.0
“Silence is not enough, my lord...Silence is the answer to everything, and to nothing.”
Really wonderful book. I had gotten used to the novel-length pacing of the previous four books, but I found that this collection (of short stories) held my interest and maintained the same quality of story-telling and characters/character development. I want to say a few preliminary things before I get into my review, then I'll go story by story. One very useful piece of information for would-be readers before I get into those is that this is indeed the 5th book of the Earthsea Cycle and is best read after Tehanu and before The Other Wind. I'm not sure if there's any doubt about that, but I was a little confused so I'm saying it now.
First, in my review of the last book I made some comments about the trilogy and the fourth book and blah blah, well anyway if you care to you can find that Le Guin wrote these books fairly far apart and that, in the foreword to this book, she clarifies that at one point she thought the fourth book would be the last, but lo and behold there was more of a story to tell. So if you're hopping from one of my reviews to the next maybe you'll see this and forgive my hasty words! Anyway, I'm glad she kept writing because the stuff she introduces in the 4th book-Tehanu-definitely warrants some more expansion. The story “Dragonfly” does a little of this, but from what I hear things really get involved in the 6th-The Other Wind, which I'll be starting shortly. Very excited to finish this excellent series.
Second, I was informed by a friend that the rpg Burning Wheel by Luke Crane based its character building system—the beliefs and instincts part of it—on Le Guin's Earthsea world. Previously I had heard it compared to lotr, which made sense from a broader world-building perspective, but specifically the character development aspects of the game align really well with Le Guin's development of her characters. Having read 5 of her books now (I'm also in the process of reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which is probably not irrelevant to mention here), I really do admire the way she constructs characters and how they act on their various motivations, and how they change. Drawing a connection between BW, a game I've played a few extended campaigns in now, makes me appreciate that even more. The connection is quite clear. BW is a great distillation of how characters live and grow in the Earthsea Cycle—compelling also because it is compelling itself, compelling to act out, play the role, and improvise in a role.
Okay great so how about this book? Well first I'll say that the foreword is excellent. It's a defiant look at what fantasy and fiction is and it's a worthwhile read for anyone reading fiction. Even if you know the ideas she puts forth in principle, it's still worth it to hear Le Guin lift fiction up onto a level that makes it worth considering alongside history and to indict modern trends of commodifying fiction and fantasy-a never-ending struggle. I've put two quotes at the bottom that give some more of the force of her points. Overall, I'd say “The Finder” and “Dragonfly” are the two strongest pieces of the collection (and longest). “On the High Marsh” and “The Bones of the Earth” were my next favorites. And last place, for me, is “Darkrose and Diamond” which still has a lot of virtuous things about it, I just happen to think it's the weakest of the 5 stories, not that anything of Le Guin's can rightfully be called weak. The collection also has great women of power and integrity as characters, which is never rare in Le Guin.
“The Finder”
Great story, great characters. This one is unique because it's set the furthest back in time, which gives a the reader a huge amount of new information about the history of the world and magic throughout the ages. The main character, Otter-Medra, is sort of like Ged but different in lacking the ambition of Ged's youth. Of course they have drastically different experiences that forge their disparate identities. But Medra is as gifted as Ged is. He's calmer, milder. He's also as committed to the idea of the balance of magic in the world as Ged is, but perhaps in a different way. Medra has to figure things out in brutal circumstances. Ged has his own brutality and isolation to suffer through, but also has the community of Roke for a time. Both characters have a serenity about them and a constant need to search for truth, in whatever form. This story hit me right in the feels, especially when he meets Anieb-someone he effortlessly connects to across the threshold of corporeality. Maybe my sentimentality is getting the best of me, but these sorts of things seem more real than not these days. Medra perseveres through so many obstacles and in the end, becomes a part of something he finds truly worthwhile, finds another person he can relate to, and sees his own age begin to change. It's great. We also find out the very first beginnings of the Roke school of wizardry and the knoll which has seemingly been there for all creation.
“Darkrose and Diamond”
So this one was my least favorite, not because it was bad but just because compared to the others it was the least compelling. I will say that the love story element of it did tug at my heart strings. I almost included a quote about something Diamond says about his love for Darkrose but decided against it. Maybe I got a little embarrassed. Anyway, the other great thing about this is that Diamond, as a practitioner of magic is such a different sort of mage than any we've encountered so far. He truly lacks ambition, and ambition for magic at that. He's also all talent and little understanding. He apprentices under a wizard who realizes that he should be sent to Roke rather than wade through more book learning. He's driven by societal forces beyond his control and resigns himself to them only to see the core of his own unhappiness. Hmph I suppose no one feels like that any more eh? There's a happy ending and for that there's a mildness about the story that's both comforting and too comforting. I'm not saying everything has to be a tragedy. The sentimental part of me loves happy endings. And there is tension and strife in the story. But something about the ending still made it less compelling to me. So that's what I'll say, without revealing that I expect all stories to end in tragedy.
“The Bones of the Earth”
Now this one has Ogion as a young man-Silence. It also can be summarized as, Ogion and his mentor stop an earthquake from destroying Gont Port. But it is so much more than that! After I finished the story I found myself asking was the earthquake really even that important? I knew it was coming but when it happened it was just an event that served only to shape the characters into who they were and present their destinies to them. Ogion as a young man is great and his master, Dulse, is equally a joy to read-a majority of the story is written from Dulse's perspective with lots of internal narration. Ogion himself, as Silence, is mostly silent, until the end. Dulse is your typical hermit wizard, but he's also got a fair share of wisdom and kindness in him. The two have a great dynamic. The ending to this one hit me pretty hard, expected as it was. A+
“On the High Marsh”
This one was a bit different from the others, which all have pretty clear backgrounds that support the goings on in the story. “On the High Marsh” starts in the middle of the story and slowly you begin to find out about a mysterious healer named Irioth. Irioth is a broken man, fractured in his mind, but tries his best to be of use. It's a tale of the power of magery and the unceasing struggle one must engage in to control it and oneself. But most of all it's a tale of kindness and forgiveness, of jealousy and the will to overcome it. Ged appears as a shining beacon on the hill. The man I see in my dreams I never remember.
“Dragonfly”
This is a pretty great sequel to Tehanu (#4). It expands, very briefly, on the idea of dragons and people being the same species, but diverged (Surprise! If you haven't read Tehanu yet) through the story of Irian, a young woman from Way. She has a fairly simple farm life, although her father is abusive and still reeling from and railing about family squabbles over the rights to various plots of land that comprise Way. Simple, that is, until she meets a wizard come to serve another lord on Way, Ivory. Ivory takes up a large portion of the narration and he's kind of irritating, but also pitiable in a way. I mean, I think he deserves sympathy. He's just confused and young. There are a lot of confused, young men out there. I may be one of them myself, haha. But Ivory has it a little worse. He carries around this resentment towards the wizards of Roke for...not giving him the affirmation he wants? So he acts out and he lets that resentment rule him. But ultimately he reaches a point where he realizes that about himself, he just doesn't know how to act on it. And that's where the story turns back to Irian who has made it to Roke, to be the first woman to attempt to enter the school as a student because she knows that something in herself is missing and that she can find it there. I liked all these themes. Fuck yeah Le Guin and her themes. Her characters are so great and they very naturally are involved in situations that force them to confront who they are and what they want in life. As if an archipelagic world steeped in ancient magicks could really disguise the struggles of the human heart that echo, persistently. So there it is, Le Guin continues to show me the heart of soul and humanity and I love to see it and read about it. I expect you will too if any of this sounds good to you.
Another thing about this story that is especially great is that one of the 9 wizard badasses of Roke-The Patterner-makes more of an appearance. He's mentioned in books 3 and 4, but only in a few brief conversations and never says much. He's cool because he's from the Kargish lands so he adds an extra element of alienness while also being just as human as everyone else. Of course I suppose I should also say he is different because, as the master patterner, he has this immaterial connection to the patterns and cycles of things and so by nature he is other and has made himself other. But it is a magical, scholarly and simultaneously not scholarly, otherness that hearkens back to “The Finder.” “Dragonfly” fits well in this collection simply because it recalls those early days with Medra on the knoll. But back to Azver-the master patterner. His name itself, his use-name, is so beautifully ironic: in Hardic it means banner of war. Anyway, he gets some more play in the last section of this story and I loved it. The quote at the top of this is from him and it rings so true to me. In the context, Thorion, the master summoner, is trying to prevent Irian from “infecting” the wizardry of Roke with her womanness, but Azver calls his obstinacy, his recalcitrance, and what will eventually be his doom, what it is. Without the context, silence is a tricky thing. It's not always a refusal to engage and refusals to engage are not themselves necessarily bad or even undesirable, but on the other hand what is there without speech and word? Silence is the answer to everything and nothing, but it is not enough.
I would recommend this book to...Everyone! The Earthsea Cycle is great. Read it, read it again. I'm not sure what the point of recommending the 5th book in a series is because you must start at the first, but yeah it's great, I love it.
Quotes:
The Foreword
“They way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn't very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it-can we even remember it-until we can tell it as a story? And for events in times or places outside our own experience, we have nothing to go on but the stories other people tell us. Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it's then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honest. If we let it drop from memory, only imagination can restore the last glimmer of it. If we lie about the past, forcing it to tell a story we want it to tell, to mean what we want it to mean, it loses its reality, becomes a fake. To bring the past along with us through time in the hold-alls of myth and history is a heavy undertaking; but as Lao Tzu says, wise people march along with the baggage wagons.”
“What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life-of a sort, for a while. Imagination like all living things lives now, and it lives with, from, on true change. Like all we do and have, it can be co-opted and degraded; but it survives commercial and didactic exploitation. The land outlasts the empires. The conquerors may leave desert where there was forest and meadow, but the rain will fall, and the rivers will run to the sea. The unstable, mutable, untruthful realms of Once-upon-a-time are as much a part of human history and thought as the nations in our kaleidoscopic atlases, and some are more enduring. We have inhabited bot the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age.”
”The Finder”
“Otter shrugged.
It was hard for him to lie. He thought he was awkward at it because he had no practice. Hound knew better. He knew that magic itself resists untruth. Conjuring, sleight of hand, and false commerce with the dead are counterfeits of magic, glass to diamond, brass to the gold. They are fraud, and lies flourish in that soil. But the art of magic, though it may be used for false ends, deals with what is real, and the words it works with are the true words. So true wizards find it hard to lie about their art. In their heart they know that their lie, spoken, may change the world.”
*
“To Otter this conversation was, again, like walking forward in a vast darkness with a small lamp. Anieb's understanding was that lamp. Each step revealed the next step he must take, but he could never see the place where he was. He did not know what was coming next, and did not understand what he saw. But he saw it, and went forward, word by word.”
*
“Whatever I am, whatever I can do, it's not enough,” he said.
“It's never enough,” Mead said. “And what can anyone do alone?”
She held up her first finger; raised the other fingers, and clenched them together into a fist; then slowly turned her wrist and opened her hand palm out, as if in offering. He had seen Anieb make that gesture. It was not a spell, he thought, watching intently, but a sign. Ayo was watching him.
“It is a secret,” she said.
“Can I know the secret?” he asked after a while.
“You already know it. You gave it to Flag. She gave it to you. Trust.”
“Trust,” the young man said. “Yes. But against-Against them?-Gelluk's gone. Maybe Losen will fall now. Will it make any difference? Will the slaves go free? Will beggars eat? Will justice be done? I think there's an evil in us, in humankind. Trust denies it. Leaps across it. Leaps the chasm. But it's there. And everything we do finally serves evil, because that's what we are. Greed and cruelty. I look at the world, at the forests and the mountain here, the sky, and it's all right, as it should be. But we aren't. People aren't. We're wrong. We do wrong. No animal does wrong. How could they? But we can, and we do. And we never stop.”
They listened to him, not agreeing, not denying, but accepting his despair. His words went into their listening silences, and rested there for days, and came back to him changed.
“We can't do anything without each other,” he said. “But it's the greedy ones, the cruel ones who hold together and strengthen each other. And those who won't join them stand each along.” The image of Anieb as he had first seen her, a dying woman standing alone in the tower room, was always with him. “Real power goes to waste. Every wizard uses his arts against the others, serving the men of greed. What good can any are be used that way? It's wasted. It goes wrong, or it's thrown away. Like slaves' lives. Nobody can be free alone. Not even a mage. All of them working their magic in prison cells, to gain nothing. There's no way to use power for good.”
”The Bones of the Earth”
“Was he your friend?”
Dulse paused. “He was my master. Would have been my friend, perhaps, if I'd stayed on Roke. Have wizards friends? No more than they have wives, or sons, some would say....Once he said to me that it our trade it's a lucky man who finds someone to talk to. Keep that in mind. If you're lucky one day you'll have to open your mouth.”
Silence bowed his rough, thoughtful head.
“If it hasn't rusted shut,” Dulse added.
“If you ask me to, I'll talk,” the young man said, so earnest, so willing to deny his whole nature at Dulse's request that the wizard had to laugh.
“I asked you not to,” he said, “and it's not my need I spoke of. I talk enough for two. Never mind. You'll know what to say when the time comes. That's the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.”
”Dragonfly”
“The Summoner, who had been standing with his back to them, facing the fireless hearth, turned round. “The names witches give each other are not our concern here,” he said. “If you have some interest in this woman, Doorkeeper, it should be pursued outside these walls-outside the door you vowed to keep. She has no place here nor ever will. She can bring only confusion, dissension, and further weakness among us. I will speak no longer and say nothing else in her presence. The only answer to conscious error is silence.”
“Silence is not enough, my lord,” said one who had not spoken before. To Irian's eyes he was very strange-looking, having pale reddish skin, long pale hair, and narrow eyes the colour of ice. His speech was also strange, stiff and somehow deformed. “Silence is the answer to everything, and to nothing,” he said.
Really wonderful book. I had gotten used to the novel-length pacing of the previous four books, but I found that this collection (of short stories) held my interest and maintained the same quality of story-telling and characters/character development. I want to say a few preliminary things before I get into my review, then I'll go story by story. One very useful piece of information for would-be readers before I get into those is that this is indeed the 5th book of the Earthsea Cycle and is best read after Tehanu and before The Other Wind. I'm not sure if there's any doubt about that, but I was a little confused so I'm saying it now.
First, in my review of the last book I made some comments about the trilogy and the fourth book and blah blah, well anyway if you care to you can find that Le Guin wrote these books fairly far apart and that, in the foreword to this book, she clarifies that at one point she thought the fourth book would be the last, but lo and behold there was more of a story to tell. So if you're hopping from one of my reviews to the next maybe you'll see this and forgive my hasty words! Anyway, I'm glad she kept writing because the stuff she introduces in the 4th book-Tehanu-definitely warrants some more expansion. The story “Dragonfly” does a little of this, but from what I hear things really get involved in the 6th-The Other Wind, which I'll be starting shortly. Very excited to finish this excellent series.
Second, I was informed by a friend that the rpg Burning Wheel by Luke Crane based its character building system—the beliefs and instincts part of it—on Le Guin's Earthsea world. Previously I had heard it compared to lotr, which made sense from a broader world-building perspective, but specifically the character development aspects of the game align really well with Le Guin's development of her characters. Having read 5 of her books now (I'm also in the process of reading The Left Hand of Darkness, which is probably not irrelevant to mention here), I really do admire the way she constructs characters and how they act on their various motivations, and how they change. Drawing a connection between BW, a game I've played a few extended campaigns in now, makes me appreciate that even more. The connection is quite clear. BW is a great distillation of how characters live and grow in the Earthsea Cycle—compelling also because it is compelling itself, compelling to act out, play the role, and improvise in a role.
Okay great so how about this book? Well first I'll say that the foreword is excellent. It's a defiant look at what fantasy and fiction is and it's a worthwhile read for anyone reading fiction. Even if you know the ideas she puts forth in principle, it's still worth it to hear Le Guin lift fiction up onto a level that makes it worth considering alongside history and to indict modern trends of commodifying fiction and fantasy-a never-ending struggle. I've put two quotes at the bottom that give some more of the force of her points. Overall, I'd say “The Finder” and “Dragonfly” are the two strongest pieces of the collection (and longest). “On the High Marsh” and “The Bones of the Earth” were my next favorites. And last place, for me, is “Darkrose and Diamond” which still has a lot of virtuous things about it, I just happen to think it's the weakest of the 5 stories, not that anything of Le Guin's can rightfully be called weak. The collection also has great women of power and integrity as characters, which is never rare in Le Guin.
“The Finder”
Great story, great characters. This one is unique because it's set the furthest back in time, which gives a the reader a huge amount of new information about the history of the world and magic throughout the ages. The main character, Otter-Medra, is sort of like Ged but different in lacking the ambition of Ged's youth. Of course they have drastically different experiences that forge their disparate identities. But Medra is as gifted as Ged is. He's calmer, milder. He's also as committed to the idea of the balance of magic in the world as Ged is, but perhaps in a different way. Medra has to figure things out in brutal circumstances. Ged has his own brutality and isolation to suffer through, but also has the community of Roke for a time. Both characters have a serenity about them and a constant need to search for truth, in whatever form. This story hit me right in the feels, especially when he meets Anieb-someone he effortlessly connects to across the threshold of corporeality. Maybe my sentimentality is getting the best of me, but these sorts of things seem more real than not these days. Medra perseveres through so many obstacles and in the end, becomes a part of something he finds truly worthwhile, finds another person he can relate to, and sees his own age begin to change. It's great. We also find out the very first beginnings of the Roke school of wizardry and the knoll which has seemingly been there for all creation.
“Darkrose and Diamond”
So this one was my least favorite, not because it was bad but just because compared to the others it was the least compelling. I will say that the love story element of it did tug at my heart strings. I almost included a quote about something Diamond says about his love for Darkrose but decided against it. Maybe I got a little embarrassed. Anyway, the other great thing about this is that Diamond, as a practitioner of magic is such a different sort of mage than any we've encountered so far. He truly lacks ambition, and ambition for magic at that. He's also all talent and little understanding. He apprentices under a wizard who realizes that he should be sent to Roke rather than wade through more book learning. He's driven by societal forces beyond his control and resigns himself to them only to see the core of his own unhappiness. Hmph I suppose no one feels like that any more eh? There's a happy ending and for that there's a mildness about the story that's both comforting and too comforting. I'm not saying everything has to be a tragedy. The sentimental part of me loves happy endings. And there is tension and strife in the story. But something about the ending still made it less compelling to me. So that's what I'll say, without revealing that I expect all stories to end in tragedy.
“The Bones of the Earth”
Now this one has Ogion as a young man-Silence. It also can be summarized as, Ogion and his mentor stop an earthquake from destroying Gont Port. But it is so much more than that! After I finished the story I found myself asking was the earthquake really even that important? I knew it was coming but when it happened it was just an event that served only to shape the characters into who they were and present their destinies to them. Ogion as a young man is great and his master, Dulse, is equally a joy to read-a majority of the story is written from Dulse's perspective with lots of internal narration. Ogion himself, as Silence, is mostly silent, until the end. Dulse is your typical hermit wizard, but he's also got a fair share of wisdom and kindness in him. The two have a great dynamic. The ending to this one hit me pretty hard, expected as it was. A+
“On the High Marsh”
This one was a bit different from the others, which all have pretty clear backgrounds that support the goings on in the story. “On the High Marsh” starts in the middle of the story and slowly you begin to find out about a mysterious healer named Irioth. Irioth is a broken man, fractured in his mind, but tries his best to be of use. It's a tale of the power of magery and the unceasing struggle one must engage in to control it and oneself. But most of all it's a tale of kindness and forgiveness, of jealousy and the will to overcome it. Ged appears as a shining beacon on the hill. The man I see in my dreams I never remember.
“Dragonfly”
This is a pretty great sequel to Tehanu (#4). It expands, very briefly, on the idea of dragons and people being the same species, but diverged (Surprise! If you haven't read Tehanu yet) through the story of Irian, a young woman from Way. She has a fairly simple farm life, although her father is abusive and still reeling from and railing about family squabbles over the rights to various plots of land that comprise Way. Simple, that is, until she meets a wizard come to serve another lord on Way, Ivory. Ivory takes up a large portion of the narration and he's kind of irritating, but also pitiable in a way. I mean, I think he deserves sympathy. He's just confused and young. There are a lot of confused, young men out there. I may be one of them myself, haha. But Ivory has it a little worse. He carries around this resentment towards the wizards of Roke for...not giving him the affirmation he wants? So he acts out and he lets that resentment rule him. But ultimately he reaches a point where he realizes that about himself, he just doesn't know how to act on it. And that's where the story turns back to Irian who has made it to Roke, to be the first woman to attempt to enter the school as a student because she knows that something in herself is missing and that she can find it there. I liked all these themes. Fuck yeah Le Guin and her themes. Her characters are so great and they very naturally are involved in situations that force them to confront who they are and what they want in life. As if an archipelagic world steeped in ancient magicks could really disguise the struggles of the human heart that echo, persistently. So there it is, Le Guin continues to show me the heart of soul and humanity and I love to see it and read about it. I expect you will too if any of this sounds good to you.
Another thing about this story that is especially great is that one of the 9 wizard badasses of Roke-The Patterner-makes more of an appearance. He's mentioned in books 3 and 4, but only in a few brief conversations and never says much. He's cool because he's from the Kargish lands so he adds an extra element of alienness while also being just as human as everyone else. Of course I suppose I should also say he is different because, as the master patterner, he has this immaterial connection to the patterns and cycles of things and so by nature he is other and has made himself other. But it is a magical, scholarly and simultaneously not scholarly, otherness that hearkens back to “The Finder.” “Dragonfly” fits well in this collection simply because it recalls those early days with Medra on the knoll. But back to Azver-the master patterner. His name itself, his use-name, is so beautifully ironic: in Hardic it means banner of war. Anyway, he gets some more play in the last section of this story and I loved it. The quote at the top of this is from him and it rings so true to me. In the context, Thorion, the master summoner, is trying to prevent Irian from “infecting” the wizardry of Roke with her womanness, but Azver calls his obstinacy, his recalcitrance, and what will eventually be his doom, what it is. Without the context, silence is a tricky thing. It's not always a refusal to engage and refusals to engage are not themselves necessarily bad or even undesirable, but on the other hand what is there without speech and word? Silence is the answer to everything and nothing, but it is not enough.
I would recommend this book to...Everyone! The Earthsea Cycle is great. Read it, read it again. I'm not sure what the point of recommending the 5th book in a series is because you must start at the first, but yeah it's great, I love it.
Quotes:
The Foreword
“They way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn't very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it-can we even remember it-until we can tell it as a story? And for events in times or places outside our own experience, we have nothing to go on but the stories other people tell us. Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it's then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honest. If we let it drop from memory, only imagination can restore the last glimmer of it. If we lie about the past, forcing it to tell a story we want it to tell, to mean what we want it to mean, it loses its reality, becomes a fake. To bring the past along with us through time in the hold-alls of myth and history is a heavy undertaking; but as Lao Tzu says, wise people march along with the baggage wagons.”
“What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life-of a sort, for a while. Imagination like all living things lives now, and it lives with, from, on true change. Like all we do and have, it can be co-opted and degraded; but it survives commercial and didactic exploitation. The land outlasts the empires. The conquerors may leave desert where there was forest and meadow, but the rain will fall, and the rivers will run to the sea. The unstable, mutable, untruthful realms of Once-upon-a-time are as much a part of human history and thought as the nations in our kaleidoscopic atlases, and some are more enduring. We have inhabited bot the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age.”
”The Finder”
“Otter shrugged.
It was hard for him to lie. He thought he was awkward at it because he had no practice. Hound knew better. He knew that magic itself resists untruth. Conjuring, sleight of hand, and false commerce with the dead are counterfeits of magic, glass to diamond, brass to the gold. They are fraud, and lies flourish in that soil. But the art of magic, though it may be used for false ends, deals with what is real, and the words it works with are the true words. So true wizards find it hard to lie about their art. In their heart they know that their lie, spoken, may change the world.”
*
“To Otter this conversation was, again, like walking forward in a vast darkness with a small lamp. Anieb's understanding was that lamp. Each step revealed the next step he must take, but he could never see the place where he was. He did not know what was coming next, and did not understand what he saw. But he saw it, and went forward, word by word.”
*
“Whatever I am, whatever I can do, it's not enough,” he said.
“It's never enough,” Mead said. “And what can anyone do alone?”
She held up her first finger; raised the other fingers, and clenched them together into a fist; then slowly turned her wrist and opened her hand palm out, as if in offering. He had seen Anieb make that gesture. It was not a spell, he thought, watching intently, but a sign. Ayo was watching him.
“It is a secret,” she said.
“Can I know the secret?” he asked after a while.
“You already know it. You gave it to Flag. She gave it to you. Trust.”
“Trust,” the young man said. “Yes. But against-Against them?-Gelluk's gone. Maybe Losen will fall now. Will it make any difference? Will the slaves go free? Will beggars eat? Will justice be done? I think there's an evil in us, in humankind. Trust denies it. Leaps across it. Leaps the chasm. But it's there. And everything we do finally serves evil, because that's what we are. Greed and cruelty. I look at the world, at the forests and the mountain here, the sky, and it's all right, as it should be. But we aren't. People aren't. We're wrong. We do wrong. No animal does wrong. How could they? But we can, and we do. And we never stop.”
They listened to him, not agreeing, not denying, but accepting his despair. His words went into their listening silences, and rested there for days, and came back to him changed.
“We can't do anything without each other,” he said. “But it's the greedy ones, the cruel ones who hold together and strengthen each other. And those who won't join them stand each along.” The image of Anieb as he had first seen her, a dying woman standing alone in the tower room, was always with him. “Real power goes to waste. Every wizard uses his arts against the others, serving the men of greed. What good can any are be used that way? It's wasted. It goes wrong, or it's thrown away. Like slaves' lives. Nobody can be free alone. Not even a mage. All of them working their magic in prison cells, to gain nothing. There's no way to use power for good.”
”The Bones of the Earth”
“Was he your friend?”
Dulse paused. “He was my master. Would have been my friend, perhaps, if I'd stayed on Roke. Have wizards friends? No more than they have wives, or sons, some would say....Once he said to me that it our trade it's a lucky man who finds someone to talk to. Keep that in mind. If you're lucky one day you'll have to open your mouth.”
Silence bowed his rough, thoughtful head.
“If it hasn't rusted shut,” Dulse added.
“If you ask me to, I'll talk,” the young man said, so earnest, so willing to deny his whole nature at Dulse's request that the wizard had to laugh.
“I asked you not to,” he said, “and it's not my need I spoke of. I talk enough for two. Never mind. You'll know what to say when the time comes. That's the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.”
”Dragonfly”
“The Summoner, who had been standing with his back to them, facing the fireless hearth, turned round. “The names witches give each other are not our concern here,” he said. “If you have some interest in this woman, Doorkeeper, it should be pursued outside these walls-outside the door you vowed to keep. She has no place here nor ever will. She can bring only confusion, dissension, and further weakness among us. I will speak no longer and say nothing else in her presence. The only answer to conscious error is silence.”
“Silence is not enough, my lord,” said one who had not spoken before. To Irian's eyes he was very strange-looking, having pale reddish skin, long pale hair, and narrow eyes the colour of ice. His speech was also strange, stiff and somehow deformed. “Silence is the answer to everything, and to nothing,” he said.
swarmofbees's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
stierwood's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.5
She always bootses
perkiso's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.0