The Dry Lands

Hello All, did you all have a fabulous weekend?  I most certainly did and it included finishing a couple of books.  On that got finished was The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin the third book in the Earthsea series.  How did it stack up to the previous two books?  I'll tell you, but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Arren, a prince of one of the islands of Earthsea has come to the school of magic on Roke to bring tidings of magic disappearing.  According to the young prince the words of Making that are used in sorcery no longer have power and strange instances are occurring.  Ged called Sparrowhawk, the Archemage of Earthsea decides to investigate as this is not the first instance of this that he has heard of.  He takes Arren with him, and setting out in his little magic boat Lookfar sets out to find out what he can.  The duo's first stop is the city of Hort on the island of Wathort where they encounter people Ged (who is in disguise) knew to be wizards.  These wizards however now deny ever having any real magic, instead calling it tricks that they no longer remember.  One magician in particular, a man by the name of Hare tells them that he has given up his true name and magic to never die.  He tells them that he can lead them to the man that offered this undying gift.  This produces nothing other then

putting both of them in danger and after a bit of an adventure the duo travel on.  They end up on the island of Lorbanery where previously amazingly dyed silks were produced.  What they find now is a town on the edge of ruin, and a population who can no longer remember the arts of their dying and silk making.  Ged and his young friend explore further, eventually coming upon a mad man who is from the family of dyers and is terrified of dying.  He promises to lead the pair to where the man who offers immortality to those who would give up their true names.  He leads them to the island of Obehol where they are attacked.  The mad man leaps into the water and apparently drowns while Ged is seriously injured.  Arren, though quickly losing faith, cares for Ged, keeping him alive until they are found by a group calling themselves the Children of the Open Sea.  These folks are a nomadic people who live on rafts most of the year.  They care for Arren and Ged until they are well enough to travel, and the raft people themselves start to feel the effect of the draining magic.  The dragon Orm Embar comes to Ged on the raft and tells him to come to the island of Selidor, the island of dragons, where the dark wizard can be found.  As they approach the island the pair notice that the dragons, an ancient and wise race of sentient beings are acting as wild animals.  They learn that the dark wizard is draining the very life out of the world, causing the dragons and all wizards and magic users to lose the language of Making, which is what the whole world is founded on.  Ged and Arren go to the Dry Lands, the land of death and find the hole in which the life force is flowing through.  Ged gives up his wizardry to close the hole and he and Arren fight their way back to life.  The ancient dragon Kallesin takes the two back home where Ged makes it clear that he thinks that Arren is the to be the King of Earthsea, a throne that had been vacant for a very long time.  Arren is crowned King Lebannen (his true name) and Ged sails away.

As with most of my synopsis, this hardly does this book justice.  In some ways I don't think you can really sum up this book, as it is more of a book of ideas then a full on story.  As with the last book in this series, Ged plays a role, but is not the central character.  Arren fills the role of the main protagonist and it is his journey we follow, with Ged as a companion.  I like this idea of Ged being an almost Merlin type character in this world, with his own story, his own deeds, but always being a part, not the focus of the larger history and story of the world of Earthsea.  This book gave us more of the history and culture of Earthsea, we learn of the prophecy of the King who will finally reunite the fragmented islands of Earthsea.  We learn a bit about the Balance, which is what governs magic and life in this world.  We also get a better look at the ancient dragons that inhabit this world (and are one of my favorite parts).  We learn of Ged's status as a dragonlord, and snatches of his time searching for the ring of the great wizard Erreth-Akbe, which we read snippets of in the last book.  We also got to
travel to some new islands, and meet the Children of the Open Ocean, who I absolutely adored.  All of this added to the incredible world building that has been going on through out the books in this series.  The story on the other hand, just didn't do it for me the way the first two books did.  In some ways it felt like every other "a man/woman/being tries to defy death and in the process makes a huge mess of the country/world and some 'good' guy who is not afraid of death, or learns to not be afraid of death comes and fixes it, usually at great cost to himself" story that ends up in series that go on for a while.  I feel like I have read this story before and got nothing new out of it.  This is not to say it is not a good story...just one I felt like I had read before.  I also felt that the pacing started to drag a little, it felt like maybe the author was going for a couple of stories before deciding to settle on the Dry Lands one and never completely wove everything together.  Again, this is just how I felt reading the book.  I did feel that the author gave us a ton of great stuff for the world that we have been getting to know, and put in enough stuff for me to look forward to reading the next one.  I hope we get more of the dragons, more of the story of Earthsea and more of the people who populate this diverse, yet cohesive world.  I give this book 6 out of 10 magic staffs and recommend it to anybody who is reading the series.  Happy Reading Everybody!
How do you feel about the "defeating death" storyline?  What world have you read about that feels complete in history and people?  Is it sad that I find any book taking over two weeks to finish "a long time"?

Water And Wizards

You know those books you know you should read, the ones by the authors you are pretty sure you are gonna love, the ones that you see on the shelves of your local bookstore, reviewed favorably by all your trusted sources and raved about by all your closest reading buddies, the ones that will probably become one of your favorites...if you could just pick it up an read it. So then finally one day you do pick it up and read it and then you beat yourself up for taking so long to pick up one of your new favorite books, WHY WHY WHY you groan to yourself, why did I take so long to read this, I could have read the rest of the series by now, I could have reread this by now, I could have gushed to everybody who would listen to this by now...why why why?!? That folks is how I felt about A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, yep it has taken me more years then I care to admit to finally read this gem and I will tell you why shortly, but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

A young boy dwelling in a northern island called Gont is found to have great wizarding potential.  He is taught by the local witch and saves his village from eastern Kargard raiders who have crossed on of the many oceans and seas to raid the boys little village.  He calls down a fog so thick that the villagers can escape and the many of the invaders are killed in the confusion.  The boy (who calls himself Sparrowhawk) is then taken to be taught by the hermit wizard Ogion who gives him his true name which is Ged.  Ged learns quickly and soon chafes under the slow pace that Ogion appears to be teaching him, culminating in him showing off to a local girl by summoning a spirit for the world beyond.  Ogion tells Ged that he has a choice, he can stay and continue to learn from Ogion at a slow pace, but will learn great control along the way, or he can leave and sail for Roke, where wizards are trained under the Archmage and his associates.  As much as Ged loves his master, he is young and hungry for power and chooses to leave.  Ged gets to Roke and is accepted as a pupil, and there he meets two people who will play two very different roles in his life.  The first is Jasper an older boy who seems to always be not quit mocking Ged, always challenging him, making him feel young and stupid, but not in an obvious way.  The other is Vetch, the big man from Iffish who is becomes Ged's

steadfast friend.  Ged learns quickly, always hungry for more knowledge and more power.  This all comes out when Jasper who has been awarded the title of sorcerer challenges Ged, resulting in Ged summoning what he ends up calling the Shadow, a twisted, deformed monster that hungers to take over Ged's body and use his powers for evil and destruction.  Ged is severely wounded and the Archmage dies protecting him.  A new Archmage is chosen, telling the finally recovered Ged that he must stay of Roke as that is the only place the Shadow cannot get to him. Ged stays and returns to his learning, but at a much slower, much more cautious pace.  He eventually earns his wizard staff and goes out into the world to earn his keep.  He ends up being the wizard to a small fishing village in the west of the world, very close to the island of Pendor which houses a dragon and his spawn.  The village is worried that when the dragons spawn get older, they will sate their voracious appetites by eating the villagers.  Ged works and lives among the people, until he starts to sense his Shadow, he knows he cannot stay and endanger the villagers, yet he cannot leave them defenseless against the dragons either. He decides to go to the island of Pendor and take care of the problem head on.  He defeats several of the young dragons and confronts the father dragon with his true name (in this world any who know a person or things true name has mastery over it, this is the real study of wizards).  The dragon tries to bargain with Ged, offering to tell him the Shadows true name, but Ged refuses and instead exacts an oath that the dragon or his offspring will never harm the villagers.  Ged then sails hither and yon, attempting to flee the Shadow.  He ends up in Osskill, a frozen island to the north where he has a run in with the Shadow, who uses Ged's name and saps him of all power.  He ends up in the care of Serret and her old husband the lord of the castle.  Serret shows him a stone that appears to be all powerful and tells him that it can tell him the name of his Shadow.  Ged realizes that the stone is actually a
prison for a malevolent spirit that has already taken in Serret and her husband for its own uses.  Ged refuses the offer of power and flees.  He sails to various islands, learning and processing life, eventually ending up on his old home island of Gont where his old master shows him that he will need to confront his Shadow if he is to ever have any sort of life.  Ged takes this to heart and instead of running starts pursuing his shadow.  After chasing it hither and yon (I love that phrase) Ged ends up on the island of Iffrish and meets up with his old friend Vetch. Together they set sail past the last known island to the south east and into the open ocean. Eventually Ged finds his Shadow and names it using his own name, finally figuring out that the Shadow he called up so long ago is actually part of him, and by naming it his true name he assumes mastery over himself.  The two friends sail home, thus starting the Earthsea Cycle and the adventures of Ged a wizard of Earthsea.

Obviously there is a whole lot of rich detail that has been left out of the synopsis.  This book is actually not all that long, but the story and the words and the imagery are just packed in like a delicious box full of chocolates.  There are a couple of reasons that it took me so long to pick this book up, the first being I had read a couple short stories of hers and while I enjoyed them, they seemed a bit dense and hard to get into and I have read "classics" that are no more then pretty words that do not add up to anything special.  This was not the case for this book.  In this case I think the full novel length of this book is much more suited to the style of prose that Ms. Le Guin employs, it is like the world of Earthsea itself a prose that swells and ebbs just like the ocean, and having enough pages for this full cycle of words to be expressed works much better then in a short story (in my own little opinion).  I will however go back and read some of the short stories now that I have a handle of the rhythem of the authors prose and see if it comes across differently. The second reason it took me a while is that there was no "hook" to get me excited to read it, I knew I should for all the reasons in the opening paragraph, but there was nothing that I had heard about that made me go "oh I have to read that right now!".  Of course now that I have read it, well I still feel the same way.  See this book is very subtle and not a really in your face type of work.  To me it is more of a story, or a piece of a long saga, and less of a book, which I love!  In some ways it reminds me of what Tolkien was trying to do with his Middle Earth saga and that is create a whole mythos for a world.  This wizard Ged we are told right away is a great and mighty epic wizard of fame and awesomeness, but the story we read is his personal journey to become the eventual legend. There is also a taste of C.S. Lewis in her prose, in the
actual traveling and interactions of Ged. This is not in any way to say that she is copying these authors, or that she has no style of her own, quit the opposite Ms. Le Guin has a very unique and beautiful writing style that is all her own, any references I make are just points of good writing that I think any good author needs to hit to be considered a writer worthy of praise. I loved that the struggle of the main character was not an epic violent battle of good vs. evil with a whole war to tear the world of Earthsea apart.  In fact the author purposely did not have her world at war, or any major world wide struggle, which is so prevalent in high fantasy.  The story however did not lag, it was still a battle of sorts, and the out come of the struggle was still as dire as any war, it was just more about a powerful man knowing himself and using that knowledge to defeat the dark parts of himself. This book is one of those where the setting is almost a character itself.  This world of Earthsea is just that, a place that is mostly water, where the land is all of these islands, there are no major landmasses like we think of, just greater and lesser islands. This influences a lot of the story in a very positive way (also keep the map in the front of the book handy to help keep all the places straight).  I also loved that nobody was white (Ok the barbarian invaders where white in a Viking sort of way, but that is it).  The hero's, the women, the men, the children, everybody was some shade of brown or black 'cause that is just how it is and especially in the era these were written, in the hey day of epic fantasy, non-white hero' were not (and sadly still are not) the norm. This point of her world is not pounded into our heads, this is not a "hey look I'm being awesome by writing about brown people" type of book, this is just how it is and I love it.  Ok so this post is getting to be as long as the book so I will attempt to wrap it up.  As I am sure you can tell, I really enjoyed this book.  It is powerful, yet subtle, epic, yet personal, involves a whole world, but is about the individual, there is magic, friendship, oceans, sailing, learning, jealousy, dragons, family, enemies, everything you could want in a book without it feeling crowded or stuffed. It is beautiful and sticks in your head and will go on my favorites shelf along with the rest of the series that I am now on my way to the book store to pick up.  I give it 9 out of 10 islands in an endless sea.

What books do you know you should read that you haven't?  What is stopping you from reading those books? Do I know how to ramble or what?