Completed the monster Earthsea tome!! Here's trilogy two!
The Books Of Earthsea (2018)
Holy fuck!! I'm where I was supposed to be at/after Sweetser before I got waylaid by bullshit, and my own stupidity.
Trilogy 1 is an unfinished symphony.
Let's finish this symphony!
Tehanu (1990)
"Tehanu" dropped in 1990, just after Sweetser.
I was aware of it from a Bookland newsletter flyer, but my stupid ass didn't nab it.
Maybe I could have sidestepped the whole stupid Harry Potter phenomenon, and I would have seen JK Rowling and Richard Dawkins for what they are.
Fuck.
Anyhoo!
Our main protagonist is Tenar from "Tombs Of Atuan".
She's going under the assumed name of Goha.
She's a widow with grownup kids who moved away.
She comes to the aid of a little girl who was raped, and thrown into a fire.
Jump ahead a year, and the girl, Therru, is recovering, and effectively adopted by Tenar.
"Farthest Shore" is in-situ.
Magic is fucking up, and Ged is on his quest, and Ogion couldn't contact him.
Its really been 25 years since "Tombs". Ged is 50.
Ogion dies, and Tenar is at his side.
Then, the dragon from the end of "Shore" drops Ged off, and the timeline syncs up.
Ged's weak as a popcorn fart, and Tenar tends to him.
Tenar and Ged admit their love for each other, and romantic love and sex come to Earthsea.
Well, with the references to rape, sexuality in all its light and dark shades comes to Earthsea.
The baddies for this one are a would-be rapist called Handy, and an incel Wizard called Aspen.
Just horrible men, not a cosmic threat like "Shore".
Well, the opening of "The Other Wind" spoils it, so here we go.
Therru is Tehanu, and Ged, Tenar, and Tehanu become a family.
Ah!! But how do they beat Handy and Aspen?
What's the deal with Tehanu's lineage?
What's the deal with dragons?
Can Ged get his powers back?
That's up to you to find out!
My favorite Earthsea.
Right up there for overall UKL books with "Dispossessed".
🥰😁
Things learned in the afterward-
Le Guin says she actually tried to write part 4 right after "Shore" but got stuck, and it took her another 18 years of living to crack it.
Garbage critics said bullshit at the time about it being negatively feminist, and a betrayal of Ged, and all that now predictable junk.
All of it could transplant right to fucking "Last Jedi".
Same stupid shitty fucking people. Same stupid shitty fucking arguments.
We call 'em CHUDs now, but they were scampering and slithering about in 1990.
Motherfuckers, you're all Aspen. How do you not see yourselves? Or, maybe you fucking do, and that's what has your dicks bent crooked.
If so, good.
Die angry.
🤷♂️
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
Five stories that both flesh out the history of Earthsea, and redress the patriarchal leanings of the first trilogy.
I dunno, IMHO, Le Guin making a patriarchal wizard society, and then dropping in feminist characters having to contend with it ends up being more interesting than if she straight out made a feminist utopia.
But, I'm a dude saying that, so I could be talking out of my ass and not know it.
The Finder.
300 years before "Wizard".
A guy named Otter/Medra/Tern basically Forrest Gumps his way through the early history of wizardry, and helps found the Roke island school.
His special skill is super-duper-dowsing. He's the titular Finder.
Along the way, he runs into a baddie wizard named Gelluk who's gone batshit from guzzling mercury, and who thinks he can refine mercury into something else by mixing it with the souls from burning bodies.
Turning dead people into an elixir? That's the liquid philosopher's stone from "Full Metal Alchemist"!
FMA just totally looted Earthsea.
Especially "Shore" and this.
Otter/Medra has a bunch of adventures, then finally, he comes to Roke island.
Women and men are both allowed to be sorcerers at this time.
It's even more women than men.
Roke becomes men-only and celibate by the time of "Wizard".
Yep, celibate. It's hinted at in the first trilogy, but UKL lays it right out in the second trilogy.
Otter/Medra even takes a lover who's effectively his wife.
Otter/Medra persuades the wise women that they need more students and knowledge to protect the island from the roaming warlords, so he goes on quests for recruits and lost books as Tern.
We don't see feminist-Roke become monk-Roke, but the seeds get planted, and we know how it turns out.
There's one more fight with an apprentice of Gelluk, and then Roke 80% becomes itself.
The longest and the best of these.
It gets its spot on the countdown list because of this one.
Darkrose and Diamond.
A love story that can be set in any era on the timeline.
Well, any era once Roke goes monk-y.
Darkrose and Diamond are our two titular lovers.
Actually, it's both a love story, and an anti-recruiting tape for monk-Roke.
Wanna be a wizard? Wanna keep your girlfriend? Ope, sorry, fella!
The Bones of the Earth.
Ogion, and how he stopped the earthquake mentioned in "Wizard".
The whole first trilogy, really. It comes up at least once per book.
Long story short; Ogion's master, Heleth, had a master named Ard.
Ard was a woman.
Even in original trilogy times, there was unconventional subversion.
On the High Marsh.
Ged when he's Archmage. Sometime between "Tombs" and "Shore".
We actually see the story through the eyes of a mystery protagonist with amnesia.
Long story short on this one, monk-Roke makes more than its fair share of incels.
Ged manages to fix this one. Well, Ged, amnesia, and the love of a woman.
Dragonfly.
The interquel to "Tehanu" and "The Other Wind".
A girl named Dragonfly/Irian tries to get into the Roke school disguised as a man.
Hi-hinks ensue!
Said hi-jinks involving a death, dragons, the still rippling repercussions from "Shore" and the very nature of the Earthsea universe!
Things learned in the forward/afterward-
Y'know how I half-joked in the Hainish reviews that I wish childhood-me had Hainish-verse figures to play with instead of He-Man?
Yeah, glad I didn't meet Le Guin, and tell her that joke. 😬😓
Her contempt for action figures was radioactive.
I mean, you can tell it's a reaction to the Harry Potter phenomenon, and I don't blame her.
Still, I would have gotten endless amusement at being able to make Hainish dioramas out of them.
The fuckery playset for "The Matter Of Seggri". Come on. 😏
That's not all she talked about; she rhapsodized about storytelling from cave paintings to now in almost mind-numbing detail.
But that's the bit that stood out to me. 😏
She was really stubborn about commodification of art being a no-no.
She truly was the anti-Rowling in every facet.
Then, the afterward, she philosophizes about how she couldn't leap into "Other Wind" until she'd tied up all these other details in all these other stories, and compares it to a spider weaving her web, and not seeing the design until it's done.
Then more about the evolution of story, and change being inevitable in our world, and in story worlds.
Kinda repeated the forward a little bit.
Good stuff though.
The Other Wind (2001)
So!
We're...
40 years after "Tombs"
15 years after "Tehanu"
8 years after "Dragonfly"
Wow!! Okay!! Another big cosmic one like "Shore"!
Ged doesn't go on this quest.
We touch base with Ged, but instead of him tagging along, we get a quest party of Alder, our new protagonist; Tenar, Tehanu, Lebannen (the King; formerly Prince Arren from "Shore"), Onyx (a wizard), Tosla (a sea captain), Sege (a prince of another island, and advisor to Lebannen), Seppel (another wizard), and Tug (Alder's kitten who protects him from nightmares (seriously)).
Later, Dragonfly/Irian from "Dragonfly" shows up to tie that in.
And Princess Seserakh; Lebannen's betrothed who he's kinda ambivalent about.
That's a seemingly unimportant thread that actually pays off.
Takes its sweet time though.
So, here's the quest.
There's a wall between the living and the dead you're not supposed to be able to cross.
Ged went to this realm in "Farthest Shore".
Alder's having realistic lucid dreams about his wife being there, and kissing him through holes in the wall. The holes are being busted in by all the ghosts who want out.
The barrier between life and death is an even bigger deal than magic breaking in "Shore" so Alder's got some shit to figure out.
Ged sends Alder to Lebannen, where Tenar and Tehanu also happen to be, and the quest begins.
To solve both the mystery of the death barrier, and the were-dragon-people like Tehanu and Irian.
The quest bounces them all over Earthsea, and there's a lot of talking.
If you thought it would resolve in a big "Lord Of The Rings" or "Deathly Hallows" style war, you absolutely haven't paid attention to who Le Guin is at all.
Much like the "Tehanu" whining brigade.
All six books get shout-outs, and everything is tied up in a nice bow.
She makes it look like it was planned this way all along, but...well, see the afterward.
Afterward-
UKL thanks the publishing company for making this book, and getting the story in the right order.
Saying how the whole saga came to her without any plan, and took directions she never would have guessed.
About how it started as young adult, and she chucked that away. Compared it to how 9 years olds read "Lord Of The Rings" and 80 year olds re-read "Alice In Wonderland".
Gives her commentary on the ending, which I won't repeat, cuz it's spoilers.
Really just a waving goodbye to the audience, really.
So!! My take-away! "Wind" is a bigger scale re-statement of "Shores".
I said in the first trilogy review, JK Rowling in her Potter stories is bitterly angrily against systemic change.
Fatalistically fight the next Hitler every couple generations, and shut up.
Push Sisyphus's boulder, you little brats!
And keep buying the puke jellybeans, and plastic wands.
Momma needs her facelifts.
"Wind" conversely gives you systemic change out the fucking yin-yang.
Earthsea truly is the antidote to everything that's wrong with Harry Potter.
And to its own adaptations.
"Wind" was out when both of those dogshit movies were made.
Talk about deliberately missing the fucking point.
Only trouble is, how do WE in OUR world stop and reverse Trumpism?
Wish UKL were here to tell me. Sigh. 😔
Previously uncollected short stories.
Being....
-The Word Of Unbinding (1964)*
-The Rule Of Names (1964)*
-The Daughter Of Odren (2014)
-Firelight (2018)
*Repeated from "The Wind's Twelve Quarters".
The Word Of Unbinding.
A good and bad wizard fight each other across the realms of life and death.
The netherworld as set up in "Wizard" "Shore" and "Wind" is created here.
The titular Word Of Unbinding pops up again in "Bones Of The Earth".
The Rule Of Names.
Another two wizards fight. And there's a dragon.
How those puzzle pieces come together I will not spoil.
The rule of names is exactly how it is in the sextilogy.
We basically get the birth of the rulebook of Earthsea wizardry right here.
The location is fleshed out as "the archipelago", even though it itself isn't quite as fleshed out yet.
The dragon is Yevaud.
The island is Pendor, where Ged found him.
Both of these are wavey-hand on whether they're canon, and UKL would admit as much.
You can choose to make them canon if you squint hard.
The Daughter Of Odren.
A weird one about a daughter and son getting revenge for the magical imprisonment of their father, but they can't agree on who the revenge needs doling out on, and what form the revenge should take.
Lebannen's deeds are mentioned, so it could be any time after "Shore".
Firelight.
Ged some unknown time after "Wind" flashes back across his whole life, and dies.
Le Guin must have known she was going.
"Firelight" is her "Lazarus" by David Bowie.
💔😔
Not necessary, but glad she wrote it. 😍👍
Damn, contemplating "Firelight" with "Lazarus" playing in my head got me all misty-eyed and reflective that night.
Hainish-verse didn't get a "Firelight" but she'd already done it in prequel form as "The Day Before The Revolution"!!
"Revolution" and "Firelight" are the bookends to her multiverse!
At least in my head-canon.
Remaining bonuses.
A Description Of Earthsea.
A little guidebook. Like a pamphlet sized D&D guide of the world. Nifty.
Earthsea Revisioned.
A talk UKL did in 1992.
Analyzing and defending her choices in all the books up to "Tehanu".
In case you wanted to see her tapdance on CHUD skulls some more. 😉
So!! Ranking time!
1. Tehanu.
2. The Other Wind.
3. Tales from Earthsea.
And now, splicing it with all the Le Guins...
And that's that.
Hainish Descent and Earthsea are now tied for my new favorite things ever.
Ursula Le Guin is good stuff.
And THAT is the end of the Christmas journey!!
Four freakin' months. Wow.
1 comment:
"Darkrose and Diamond" had a song, but I can't read music, so it may as well have been an algebra equation. Then it popped in my head, I bet a musician somewhere has played it. They have!
https://erreth-akbe.bandcamp.com/track/where-my-love-is-going
It's a cute little ditty. Something a couple medieval teenagers would come up with. They're not gonna compose a Mozart opera. It would be this.
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