What Book to Read?

I tried the second book of Stephen Donaldson’s First Chronicles of Thomas Covernant (The Illearth War, 1977) but it’s really not my thing. So I turned instead to Ursula Le Guin, hoping to have my faith in the fantasy genre renewed. I wasn’t disappointed. The Quartet is a classic. The books that make it up – A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu – are really children’s stories, but somehow reading them together in one volume gives a coherence that is adult in its appeal.

Earthsea is a group of islands inhabited by diverse peoples, surrounded by uninhabited seas. Its people are mostly farmers, merchants or artisans but a few are wizards, trained in the high arts on the island of Roke. They (mostly) observe the Balance and the Pattern which keep magic and ordinary things in equilibrium, as unwisely used, a wizard’s power is dangerous. It should ‘follow knowledge and serve need’. But there are older powers and fallible or malevolent wizards that disrupt the balance; all four books are in different ways about these.

A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) tells how the wizard Ged comes from boyhood into his full power, and how in his arrogance he causes a Nameless spirit to escape into the world. Magic power is based on the power of naming; Ged must find the name of this spirit in order to return it to the land of the dead and restore the balance of his own life. In The Tombs of Atuan (1971) Tenar becomes Priestess of the Tombs, dedicated to the service of the Nameless Ones. In the darkness of the Undertomb, where no man is allowed to go, she is outraged to find a somewhat older Ged, who is looking for the other half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, which if made whole has the power to bring peace to the islands. In The Farthest Shore (1972), Ged, now Archmage of Roke, and the young prince Arren, undertake a mighty journey to find out why magic is no longer working properly. And in the much later Tehanu (1990), some of the characters and themes of the earlier books are further explored. It is this last book that gives the quartet its unity and makes it more than a series of separate children’s stories.

Le Guin writes simply but lyrically, with a sort of high seriousness appropriate to a fantasy epic. Here Ged is explaining the Balance. ‘Do not you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends.’

Le Guin has created a fully coherent world for her stories. It is pre-industrial in its physical setting; people mostly live on what they can grow or make, leavened sometimes with a bit of magic. It is also a hierarchical and paternalistic world. Men rule in both the temporal and the magic spheres. Only men can become wizards; those who don’t meet the demanding standards of the school on Roke become sorcerers. (And before you start making comparisons with Hogwarts, think which came first.) Women with magic power only become village witches. There is a saying ‘weak as women’s magic’. Wizards and sorcerers are highly respected. But women with power are distrusted; there is also a saying ‘wicked as women’s magic’. In the last book, Tehanu, Le Guin offers a challenge to these assumptions through the fates of Ged and Tenar, and also the abused child, Therru. The humanity of this story makes it as much an adult book as is The Lord of the Rings.

It is not surprising to find that Ursula Le Guin, now over 80, maintains a strong interest in issues of feminism, ecology and the free speech issues around Wikileaks. You can follow up on her wide range of interests on her amazing web pages here. Details of her career and other writing are summarised here.