A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Exquisite prose, Le Guin remains one of the masters of the genre. I read this as a young teenager and was forever looking for writers of her calibre. No plot spoilers, do yourself a favor, if you've never read any of Ursula K. Le Guin, start with this book. ( )

Really good. The writing style isn't always the most engaging, but that's pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of the story being told. ( )

An interesting story ( )

Le Guin, Ursula K. A Wizard of Earthsea. 1968. Afterword by Ursula K. Le Guin. Earthsea Cycle No. 1. HarperCollins, 2012.
A Wizard of Earthsea is classic fantasy. Initially conceived and marketed as a children’s book, it soon found that it played just as well to an adult readership. It tells the story of how a young boy with some innate magical abilities learns to become a powerful wizard. He has plenty of flaws and must learn more than about spellcasting to succeed. It is an adventure story set in an archipelago. Le Guin tells us in her 2012 afterword that she had fewer models and less competition in constructing a fantasy narrative than came to be the case later. She had Tolkien and the Arthurian legends and was inspired to wonder what Gandalf and Merlin were like as youngsters and what it took for them to learn what it took to become wizards. What our young wizard learns is that what he thought was power was not actually power and that his capacity for harm was larger than he knew. To defeat the evil shadow he has conjured, he must face it and own it as his. 5 stars. ( )

A Wizard of Earthsea is one of the most important fantasy novels in the genre, right up there with Tolkien. Reading this book, finally, for the first time, I see how other novels have stood on its shoulders (most notably the Kingkiller Chronicles), and I am glad this book exists.

That being said, it is not a book for me; possibly, Ursula K. Le Guin is not an author for me. It reads like it was written by an anthropologist (in fact, I was certain she must be until I looked it up just now), which was fine during The Left Hand of Darkness, but dry and wearing during a fantasy adventure.

As with many books I'm just getting around to, I think to myself, "If only 10, 15, 20 years ago someone handed me this book." ( )