Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series

[bloodsteel bitterraven]

I searched the Literature board and I couldn't find a topic about this wonderful series.

I thought I would start a discussion.

I had read a Wizard of Earthsea awhile ago and while I liked it, I didn't read the other books in the series until recently. I read the Tombs of Atuan and the Farthest shore during a trip, and today I finished Tehanu. Has anyone else read these books? What are your thoughts? Any comments? Questions? I am planning to read Tales of Earthsea at some point when I have time.

[Lord Toblerone]

I love Ursula Le Guin.

Of the Earthsea books, my favourites are The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu. I didn't really enjoy the Farthest Shore very much, the stories in Tales from Earthsea are very good, and the Other Wind is okay, not great.

Once you're done with Earthsea, read her excellent recent trilogy, Annals of the Western Shore - Gifts, Voices and Powers.

Then there's a whole lot of other goodness she wrote, if you're still interested.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Yes, and Le Guin should have really stopped at three books. Tehanu and The Other Wind were unnecessary, not least because the former felt like an author trying to "correct" the writings of twenty years past. But the first three are excellent, and genre-defining (a wizards' school before Pratchett, never mind Rowling or Rothfuss).

[David Selig]

Great series, one of my very favourites. I personally love Tehanu, yeah, there are retcons, but so what, it's brilliantly written and so different from your typical fantasy.

[Solmyr]

It has been a great while since I read Earthsea (and I never re-read it, so things are murky in my head). But I remember liking AWoE very much, I found TToA extremely boring at first, until I saw how it connects to the main story, I liked TFS the most. Tehanu felt oddly disconnected from the rest, somewhat like TToA, but without the part where you go "oh, so this is where the storylines fit together" - maybe because it was the last book of the series.

As for Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind - I don't remember much, except that I really liked one of the stories in the former. It had to do with something underground (it really is all that I can remember atm).

Overall the series are a good read, they could have 'high's and 'low's, depending on your taste for fantasy.

I need to find time and re-read the series.

[sologdin]

tehanu is ibsen with ignivomous saurians, no?

[Wilbur]

If my own memory of my reading history is correct, the Earthsea books were only the second books I had ever read where the protagonists were black. (The first being of course Farnham's Freehold.)

However, whereas The Dean made race a key aspect of FF's conflict, in the Le Guin books, the races being inverted to the norm for American fantasy of the time was just an incidental aspect of the story.

Since the first three books were high quality reads for the youth market, one of the best aspects of reading them was to allow young white kids in the 1970s to think that it was perfectly fine for the protagonists to be other than midwestern scientists / WASPy inventors / musclebound Viking-barbarians.

In fact, I personally only came to realize this on a long bus ride coming home from a game, when one of the other guys on the team was reading TToA copy that I had loaned him. He looked up at me and said something like, "Hey, did you know these guys are black?" I naturally played it off like I knew this all along and it was totally to be expected, but actually I was thinking, "Yeah, they are, and it doesn't make any difference."

These are really well-thought out books, full of real moral conflicts, outstanding backstories, interesting characters, inventive worldviews, and engaging plots. And they are some of the most easily accessible books Le Guin wrote, since several of her other books are much further out on the "weird" continuum.

[Wilbur]

Le Guin has written some further books in the Earthsea world, but I have only read Tehanu of these later novels.

Tehanu had a very different style and focus than the earlier trilogy, and it wasn't to my taste, so I did not read any of the other books.

The earlier books had clear conflicts and objectives for the characters to achieve, whereas in Tehanu was all about relationships, and the returning main characters from earlier novels seemed to regress significantly and act in childish ways that seemed out of character for them given what we knew about them from before (trying not to spoil here).

So the first three were very inventive and interesting, while Tehanu was much less gripping to me. The dithering, indecisive mindset of characters who earlier had wrestled with and acted in the face of moral and mortal dilemmas put me off pretty strongly, given what I was expecting from the construction of the first books.

[bloodsteel bitterraven]

I liked Tehanu and it was a very fast read. I can see why some people might have thought it was unnecessary, but if we never found out what happened to Ged or Tenar or Lebannen we might have been equally disappointed.

[naz]

I've read all the books in the series and I understand why people don't care much for the later books. But I still like them nevertheless. They're still written very well, despite being in a different style and having different characterizations. I'm fine with that. Authors are not static, after all, and I'm interested to see how they approach the same material after a long period of time and experience, as long as it's well-written. And there's very little in Le Guin's oeuvre which is not well-written. She's a gifted writer, and her prose and language are some of the best I've read in any genre.

If you enjoyed Earthsea, I recommend you read her other works, especially The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and The Lathe of Heaven. They are not like Earthsea at all, with regards to subject matter or style, but reflect the full maturity of her talent when writing about social systems. The Earthsea books, while still beautifully written, will seem like children's books in comparison.

[MinDonner]

The original trilogy was possibly my favourite book of my early teens, I must have borrowed that one copy from the library a dozen times. Each of the three is great in its own way, but they all have the most fantastic sense of atmosphere; I'm not sure I've ever read ancient evil portrayed so spine-chillingly. And her dragons are the best dragons.

Tehanu, I was possibly too young to appreciate when I read it, as the main reaction I remember having was "WTF is this boring crap?" and I suspect I no longer own a copy to try again. Maybe one day.

[gordonah]

Like some of the above, it's a long time since I read them (25+ years), but I do remember them very fondly. They were some of the best books I read as a youngster. I only read the first three, as that's all there was at the time.

[Tears of Lys]

I love Ursula LeGuin. Just the thought that there are other books out there that she's written that I haven't read yet is a source of strange joy.

I've read the Earthsea series up to Tehanu. I adored every one of them. Left Hand of Darkness is another of hers I've read and loved. She has this equisite gift of making you feel and consider things of which you didn't know you were capable.

[Eponine]

The Tombs of Atuan was a life-changing book for me when I was in my early teens. Looking back, it's amazing to me now how captivating and interesting a book that mostly stays in the same dark place with minimal characters was for a 12 year old.

I recommend The Dispossessed - as Naz said, it's different in style and subject, except that IMO, LeGuin's style tends to be to take a huge world, sometimes a huge universe of her own creation and draw the reader into the minutia of the lives of a few characters. I liked Left Hand of Darkness less, and apparently I'm in a minority there - but something that influenced my feelings a lot was that I read it after having read A LOT of her other work, and for me, the Ekumen stories were starting to have a slightly repetitive cast to them, or anyway a certain inevitability. If it had been one of her first works I'd read, I'm sure I would have felt differently.

[thecryptile]

I loved the first three Earthsea books, but never read any further in that series. It's very unique, having spawned no imitators like the works of Tolkien and Howard.

The Hainish Ekumen books and stories are a bit repetitive, but very good nonetheless.

Fisherman of the Inland Sea and The Lathe of Heaven are also worth checking out. I couldn't get into Orsinian Tales, and didn't finish it.

One reason I enjoy Le Guin is that her perspective is so different from mine. While I don't agree with her politics, it's very interesting to see the world through her lens.

[Lord Toblerone]

The Tombs of Atuan was a life-changing book for me when I was in my early teens. Looking back, it's amazing to me now how captivating and interesting a book that mostly stays in the same dark place with minimal characters was for a 12 year old.

I recommend The Dispossessed - as Naz said, it's different in style and subject, except that IMO, LeGuin's style tends to be to take a huge world, sometimes a huge universe of her own creation and draw the reader into the minutia of the lives of a few characters. I liked Left Hand of Darkness less, and apparently I'm in a minority there - but something that influenced my feelings a lot was that I read it after having read A LOT of her other work, and for me, the Ekumen stories were starting to have a slightly repetitive cast to them, or anyway a certain inevitability. If it had been one of her first works I'd read, I'm sure I would have felt differently.

Oh yes, The Left Hand of Darkness was the first of her adult SF I read, and I just adore it. I read the Dispossessed after it, and love it less, still a very good book.

Having this year read some of the rest of the Hainish stuff - Worlds of Exile and Illusion (omnibus of 3 novels) and Four Ways to Forgiveness - there is a pattern to many of the Hainish stories, but I love all of it no less.

I've read all the books in the series and I understand why people don't care much for the later books. But I still like them nevertheless. They're still written very well, despite being in a different style and having different characterizations. I'm fine with that. Authors are not static, after all, and I'm interested to see how they approach the same material after a long period of time and experience, as long as it's well-written. And there's very little in Le Guin's oeuvre which is not well-written. She's a gifted writer, and her prose and language are some of the best I've read in any genre.

If you enjoyed Earthsea, I recommend you read her other works, especially The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and The Lathe of Heaven. They are not like Earthsea at all, with regards to subject matter or style, but reflect the full maturity of her talent when writing about social systems. The Earthsea books, while still beautifully written, will seem like children's books in comparison.

She is so good at that stuff. I think it must have something to do with being the daughter of two anthropologists.

I love Ursula LeGuin. Just the thought that there are other books out there that she's written that I haven't read yet is a source of strange joy.

I've read the Earthsea series up to Tehanu. I adored every one of them. Left Hand of Darkness is another of hers I've read and loved. She has this equisite gift of making you feel and consider things of which you didn't know you were capable.

Her characters just breathe, to me, they have so much reality to them.

In Four Ways to Forgiveness, there's 4 interconnected stories and it's all about women and slavery and revolution. So, so good. And she can use so little to say so much.

[Gillio]

I really enjoyed the Earthsea series, but its a long time since i read them, might have to dig them out again!!

I think I read Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster of Hed series about the same time .

[tissa]

Loved the tombs of atuan, my paper copy is barely in one piece.

The trilogy seemed to have a feel for how mages should be.

[Seiche]

I love Ursula LeGuin. Just the thought that there are other books out there that she's written that I haven't read yet is a source of strange joy.

I've read the trilogy discussed here as well as The Left Hand of Darkness and feel just as you've described. Her combination of intellect and beautiful prose is special. Each time I'm ready for a new book I consider another from LeGuin, but am working to parse them out.