This is the first book in this whole long process we’re doing, so this structure is sure to evolve and change as we go. That being said, here’s the reaction to Wizard of Earthsea, which I finished last night.
This book was written as YA, which I didn’t know going in. Granted, that’s late-60’s YA, so it’s not as clearly for kids or teens as what fits the genre now. The main character, for example, spends the majority of the book (as it struck me anyway) as an adult, albeit a young one. Near the end, there’s confirmation that he’s 19, and had been living and working as an adult for at least a couple of years (mostly just sailing around getting in trouble, but as an adult).
Maybe it’s a New Adult (NA) epic fantasy?
It read to me more like the Tolkien-y or “mythic” kind of fantasy – more of an all-ages read than just for kids. It did feel short, though (physical copy is coming today, so I’ll reassess_.
What did you think of it?
It felt like the right start. The overall style is much more “telling a story” than many of the more recent fantasy books that I’ve read. This shift in tone was a good mental reset: there are genre conventions, but it’s a big, wide genre. This story feels like one being told in world, and it lets things unfold in a direct, natural way.
It also does a lot of heavy lifting for the world-building. A tone of “in those days, the isle of ____ was known for ____. This was long before ____” is immersive and develops the world in ways that can be vague or expanded later but still ensure that the world feels real and that the reader is going to know what’s important. There’s a lot of talk on some reddit forums about “the iceberg method” — basically that the writer should have a huge amount of backstory and thought behind things that only surface in the story a little (top of the iceberg) or, maybe more popularly, that the writer should at least hint at there being more to these worldbuilding ideas when there really isn’t (yet); they could then go back and flesh them out later.
I don’t know which it is, but there’s a feeling of a sketch of a whole big world here, and the only bits we really need to know are told to us explicitly. There’s a lot of place names and island names sprinkled around… did LeGuin have all that fully fleshed out in her head when she wrote it? Maybe. I doubt it. But I won’t be surprised to learn that more Earthsea books flesh out and develop tons of things just dropped in here to make the world feel real and lived-in and interesting.
The theme of the book is really strongly conveyed – there is power in names and the main character has to learn to be a full person and to own his name/character fully in order to find his place in the world. He starts off as an arrogant kid, oversteps and nearly dies, gets humbled, tries to correct his overstep, and ultimately understands that he can’t be whole without facing his failings and his potential directly. There’s plenty of this that even feels on the nose after the fact – names are secrets and give power, the adversary is literally called his shadow throughout (and eventually comes to look like/be mistaken for him). To her credit as a writer, Le Guin never makes this feel obvious in the moment… but it helps for the ideas to click into place easily when we get there.
Characters
The characters are generally well-drawn, though not extremely well developed beyond the main character, Ged. This adds to the “told tale” vibes here. One thing that jumped out at me was the way that the women are written. There aren’t very many of them in the book, and none has a ton of “screen time.” Still, I remember all three women clearly and have a stronger sense of them than almost anyone else in the book.
Of course we get Ged, who’s the main character. Beyond that, the only men that I feel made a strong impression were his friend and his rival from wizard school and his old master from before he went off to school. I have a decent sense of each, at least at certain points in the story, but I have a similar sense about the three women even though (at a guess) each of the above-mentioned men gets two to three times as many words written about them (probably much more) than all the women combined.
Maybe it’s because the author is a woman that she’s able to weave these in so memorably… or maybe it’s a matter of cultural expectation and the perspective of remaining largely close on Ged’s point of view… Like, do I remember the women better because I remember how focused I was on women when I was, like Ged, an inexperienced teenage boy? Or is this conveyed directly (and not just me) for the same reason? Or is Le Guin just great at drawing out interesting and unique female characters easily?
Plot
By and large, the plot held together and moved at a solid clip. It never felt rushed, and it rarely dragged. I did find the “shipwrecked on an island” bit to be a little tedious, but even that was paid off with some detail about how the couple got there and about what ultimately happened to them (a benefit of the “told tale” tone – you can digress with interesting bits without losing the reader).
I felt for a while like there was going to be a bigger quest that this story led into, but I think that’s more a reflection of where this whole thing is going. I imagine the author feeling as she wrote this that there was a ton of world to explore later, and that seems to come through in the writing.
The climax was, for me, not great.
I absolutely acknowledge that some of this was due to knowing how much of the book was left – with more than 10% remaining of the book, I thought the final confrontation was going to be longer and more challenging. When it wrapped up the shadow story and then was just “and they went home” and “he went on to do more cool stuff,” I was a bit surprised.
The rest of the book was an essay by the author (that I resisted reading so I could get my reaction down first).
Endings are hard, I know, and
SPOILER ALERT
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The idea of the shadow having used Ged’s true name to nearly kill him only for Ged to realize, in the end, that he knew the shadow’s true name all along because it was him, too (true name: Ged)… that’s elegant and feels right… but in actual execution it just read as kind of quick and easy.
I think it may grow on me, but my initial impression (maybe because I was reading faster and more into the story by the end) is that Ged’s summoning of the shadow and his confrontation with it in the snow and even his later temptation from that creepy shadow stone were more fleshed out and exciting than the end of the whole story.
final thoughts
It was a fast, fun read with a style that I want to absorb. I added Uprooted to my list because, having read it before, I know that I wanted to analyze and hopefully take in some of the vibe of a twist on the familiar told tale – A Wizard of Earthsea does a lot of the same thing, but I had no idea when I opened it.
I come away from it feeling a bit underwhelmed by the final resolution, but also wanting more. I want to know the next things that Ged gets up to that make him so important to the audience. I want details on his quests and whatnot. I want to know if he and his friend’s little sister get together (as seems obvious from this story).
Were I not in the middle of this “read these books and respond” mission I set myself, I’d be looking for the next Earthsea book to start reading today… so I guess it’s by and large a success for me.
More thoughts, I suppose, when I do the later dissection/breakdown bit, but for now, definitely a fan. I had only ever read some Le Guin short stories before, and now I understand that I was really missing out.
