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A review by jarrahpenguin
Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
adventurous
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Absolutely incredible series of short stories and novellas exploring the beginning, middle gaps and edges of the Earthsea story. Through it all are themes of power and moral choices. “If power is responsibility, for whom are you responsible?” poses Le Guin in the afterword.
The first story, “The Finder” is a beautiful, gutting tale of the founding of the bond between two people who are enslaved for their magic abilities and how this leads to the founding of the school on Roke. There’s a haunting part where Otter is hopeless and believes there is a darkness in people that society cannot overcome. Again, Le Guin writes as if she saw our future.
“Dragonfly” is an interesting transition to book 6 that introduces fascinating new characters in a way that feels like it speaks to a new period in Earthsea history.
My least favourite was “Darkrose and Diamond” but I appreciated the style and the theme of having to choose between music and magic.
And the afterword, well Le Guin writes about the threat of people spreading and buying into misinformation online, years before it got to where it is today.
The first story, “The Finder” is a beautiful, gutting tale of the founding of the bond between two people who are enslaved for their magic abilities and how this leads to the founding of the school on Roke. There’s a haunting part where Otter is hopeless and believes there is a darkness in people that society cannot overcome. Again, Le Guin writes as if she saw our future.
“Dragonfly” is an interesting transition to book 6 that introduces fascinating new characters in a way that feels like it speaks to a new period in Earthsea history.
My least favourite was “Darkrose and Diamond” but I appreciated the style and the theme of having to choose between music and magic.
And the afterword, well Le Guin writes about the threat of people spreading and buying into misinformation online, years before it got to where it is today.
As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot’s poems a bird sings, “Mankind cannot bear very much reality.” I’ve always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death and Slavery