This sweet book is not immune to criticism--there is a cipher quality to many of the characters--even Ged, the hero of the Bildungsroman--and for someone who writes so perceptively on gender relations in The Dispossessed, Le Guin seems to be restraining herself in an oddly Stepfordian way here.

So it's not psychological realism, although, with what happens between Ged and his shadow at the end, it may be Jungian psychological myth. But what is amazing and special about Earthsea is the way Le Guin hits the high-fantasy classics--wizard's school, dragon, mastering the dark within--and I don'tknow exactly what kind of cliches those were or weren't in 1968,but managing to create a world that's recognizably sword-and-sorcery in a way that Narnia, say, ain't, but making it so, so inventive, to boot.

The pre-Classical world-of-water setting makes me shiver. There are echoes of the fearful cottagers and fishermen of the Northern epics, clinging to bare rocks with salty springs and nothing but grey waves forever and ever; and of Crete and Tartessos, and clearly a tentative, mists-of-time Mediterranean setting is better than any Roman triumphalism.

But really what this seems like to me is a striking fusion of classic Euro-fantasy with the milieu of the aboriginal west coast of North America--not the myth cycles, but, like, the feel of the place. Some of the islands are big, or biggish--Havnor is the size of Mindanao, and has produced an early-Iron Age civilization--and you can imagine Earthsea as a sort of Salish Sea-world, with a few big cities and a plenitude of villagers living off the sea, moving from island to island, and on the poorer islands, with only clamshells for knives and sharp rocks for adzes, etc. There are echoes of that weird coastal-California Island of the Blue Dolphins thing where they're not Pacific Northwest and not Polynesian and not Navajo, and there are even wisps of, like, Ataanarjuat more than Beowulf in Ged's mystic stoicism--but how it feels the most is that someone with a real love for the Salish and Haida and Nuu-chah-Nulth peoples dared to imagine a world where a culture not so different from theirs would survive and flourish and dominate and produce its own heroic fantasy and magic system, non-Vancian or -Tolkienian, but . . . other.

And she made them all brown, of course, except for the black people of the East Reach and the Norse(ish)men of Karg. It's like starting a game of Civ 4 with Hittites, Vikings, Zanzibaris and a Salishan civilization with downloadable graphics that is the first one to discover Map Making. And then you add magic. And then Ursula Le Guin writes about how it feels. What doesn't sound great about that? ( )

A Wizard of Earthsea is the tale of Ged, from the time of his birth in Gont until he reaches manhood. He learns sorcery, but a prideful accident causes the death of the Archmage and forces him to go on a quest to defeat an enemy unlike anything anyone in his world has ever faced. He is aided by his friend Vetch and his master Ogion, but in the end it is up to him to face what he himself unleashed.

More fantasy than science fiction, and more fantasy than anything I've read by LeGuin before, A Wizard of Earthsea was not really my cup of tea. However, it had an engaging plot, an enchanting ( ( )

Sparrowhawk is a driven boy whose anger and jealousy often drive him to do things that could be considered unwise, but there is no doubt that he possesses considerable power. This first tale of his adventures in the world of Earthsea tells of how he leaves home to be educated as a wizard and comes to face a terrible dark creature that could be his ruin.

I really appreciated the story in A Wizard of Earthsea and the characters. I love how the main character grows throughout the tale, but I simply wasn't driven to keep reading this. I had visitors in the middle of it, and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a book with so little dialog. Even now as my mind appreciates how good the book was, I can't decide if I'll ever push on through the next one, The Tombs of Atuan. More than likely, I'll try again, but this being the first thing I've ever read by Ursula K. Le Guin, I think I'll try some of her science fiction before I continue on with this story. ( )

At first the story is a little hard to get into since it reads much more like a mythological tale told from a bird’s-eye view rather than a cohesive story that moves toward a climax and resolution. Soon, though, this becomes an endearing quality to the writing, as if you’re reading the history of this powerful wizard that many of Earthsea would know in lore. It’s much like reading The Silmarillion by Tolkein, which is the history of Middle Earth, or historical myth lore from various world cultures. In that way, you feel like you’re part of Earthsea, reading about your own history and heroes of legend.On a more micro level, the text has more depth than a typical fantasy novel. Ged’s journey to adulthood is both dark and complicated, and in the end, he must embrace the evil in himself in order to overcome it, which is an interesting philosophical commentary. I find myself waxing with LeGuin about whether or not recognizing and embracing the evils within ourselves enables us to overcome them rather than being consumed by them. Our own journeys may not be as tangible as Ged’s, but who knows?At this point this main quartet involving Ged has become somewhat of a classic set within the fantasy fiction genre, and it’s a nice fireside read. I recommend it to all readers, but the main audience will be fantasy buffs 12 .-Lindsey Miller, www.lindseyslibrary.com ( )