A review by kitnotmarlowe
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-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
5.0
First five-star read of 2023, yee and fucking haw. I'm sticking to my rule of giving anything that makes me cry a five. I would have given it five stars even if it hadn't made me cry because Ursula K. Le Guin physically reached into my rib cage and played it like a xylophone! Everyone still choking on JKR's boot in 2023 should read Earthsea and take some personality tests instead. I guarantee it will hit the same, if not harder because Le Guin put actual thought into her writing rather than stringing sentences together to hurt the most people with the fewest words.
If I were to summarize the writing in this book with one word, it would be "comforting." The prose is like an old coat or an old story your grandmother's told you a dozen times before, and you ask for it again, even though you know how it by heart. So little of this novel is dialogue, and yet it never feels as though the story is being summarized or passively told. Instead, it feels like you're sitting at someone's knee as they tell it. It's not always grand and heroic, and the tragedy is never sanitized. Ged fails in a way that protagonists are no longer allowed to fail. Yes, he slays dragons, but he cannot save a small child. Which is more significant? A whole island is better off now that the dragon is gone, but that child had a family. How do we measure such triumphs? How do we make sense of failures that appear minor in the grand scheme of things? I cried on the first page of this book, and the scene I just mentioned demolished me like a Jenga tower.
Something about Earthsea that I found soothing and which has become increasingly scarce in recent decades, is Ged's complete normalcy. Yes, he's the hero of this story, but there's something so ordinary and unpretentious about him. He's just a goatherd... There's something about having your Chosen One be ordinary that we've lost, and I don't want to blame the Star Wars prequels for it, but I will. Nowadays, genre fiction is full of Chosen Ones who are special beyond belief and must suffer for it; if you want to be the Hero of your story, you must be born with the innate capacity for heroism rather than achieving it. It is especially important when writing for children that they believe in the simple courage of ordinary people! Ged has to be an ordinary boy before he can be a mage; the climax of this book isn't a fantastical showdown but a quiet recognition. And then I think about some of the fantasy series I loved as a kid where the protagonist is always just Some Kid. The protag of the Chronicles of Prydain (my beloved) is the assistant pigkeeper to an oracular pig. The protag in Hilari Bell's Sword, Shield, and Waters trilogy (which I think only four other people on the planet have read but from which I still vividly remember scenes) is a judge's clerk. The kids in Narnia all end up there by accident. It's about the possibility of seeing yourself in these stories. Thought and care for your fellow humans are more attainable than golden thrones and magical swords.
In a better world, Earthsea is the de facto boy wizard school series, and Ao3 has more than two (2) Ged/Vetch fics because oh my god. I'm not using fanfiction as a metric or an indicator of something's quality; after all, there's so much fanfiction for the last 10 or so interchangeable MCU movies that's just smashing Ken dolls together in front of a green screen that cost 75 kajillion dollars and looks like it was made by a 15-year-old in iMovie. However, I need more people to experience Ged/Vetch because these bitches are in love, and I am obsessed with the way Le Guin writes about the necessary intimacy between men on perilous journeys (my fave topic). In The Left Hand of Darkness, Estraven has to defrost Genly's eyeball. In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged controls the mage-wind and steers the boat for hours while Vetch sleeps, and vice versa.
The last thing I have to say is that, had I read this as a child, I would have been even more scared of the dark than I already was. I am mildly afraid of the dark as a fully-grown adult, and the concept of Ged's shadow is horrific. It didn't help that I was already a little rattled, having spooked myself reading the plot summary for Skinamarink. But I was trying to fall asleep with the light on at 25 years old, thinking, "I can't get up to use the washroom because Ged's shadow is going to get me."
Anyway, I'm excited to continue the series! I'm going to space out the books; otherwise, I think the emotional devastation might just ruin me. But I'm really excited to spend more time in the world of Earthsea, and I have many questions I would like answered. Apparently, the next book has a human sacrifice cult run by the evil white people, so that's exciting.