In this first book, A Wizard of Earthsea readers will witness Sparrowhawk's moving rite of passage--when he discovers his true name and becomes a young man. Great challenges await Sparrowhawk, including an almost deadly battle with a sinister creature, a monster that may be his own shadow.

Product Description
Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea,but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a recklessyouth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tamperedwith long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadowupon the world. This is the tale of his testing,how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed anancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold torestore the balance.

But the book isn't a treatise. It's a wonderful, well-told story of a young man, Ged, coming of age in a world where words can have the power of magic and dragons are as real as earthquakes. There is nothing didactic about this story; Le Guin's writing is compelling and her characters are vivid: Ogion, the Mage of Silence, whose word had stilled an earthquake; Vetch, who helps Ged on a deadly quest for no reason but friendship; Murre, Vetch's sister; Yevaud, the dragon of Pendor; and Skiorh, possessed by a gebbeth.

Earthsea doesn't exist in a vacuum. Le Guin constructs a deep and textured history, and her characters act in ways that are consistent with that world. She manages the trick of writing a mythic tale without falling into the traps and foibles of sounding like you are trying.

The climax is straight from Carl Jung, but you don't need to know Carl Jung from Steve Young to appreciate it.

From time to time, religious groups call for this book to be banned from school libraries, claiming it promotes witchcraft. Nonsense. This is a book every teenager should read. It speaks to self-understanding, nothing more.

And some feminists criticize Le Guin because Ged is a male character. Again, nonsense, Ged is an archetype, and his gender matters not at all.

This is an important book. It's also terrific fun. Highly recommended.


Anthropological Fantasy Masterpiece   April 21, 2003
 70 out of 82 found this review helpful

Ursula K. LeGuin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" comes from a different place then the other two fantasists with whom her Earthsea trilogy is so often compared. Tolkein's so-called fantasy was a real attempt to capture what Tolkein believed the languagues lost before the beginnings of early English, while his Oxford colleague wrote his Narnia fantasies from a Christian viewpoint. LeGuin's fantasy novels derive from her background in anthropology and show it in every way.

The story concerns the Wizard Sparrowhawk and his education. Sparrowhawk comes from a desperately poor village in the mountains, from among illiterate peasants (compare to the world of the hobbits, where, though illiterate, there is no squalor) who live with their goats. His home island, Gont, is the birthplace of Goatherds, Pirates, and Wizards, and from an early age Sparrowhawk shows his powers. After saving his village from an invading army, Sparrowhawk is apprenticed to Ogion, the great Mage. There Sparrowhawk begins to learn what Wizards know: the names of all things. He also is drawn to showing off, including calling up the dead.

Too powerful and curious for Ogion, Sparrowhawk goes to the isle of Roke to attend the school there ( Rowling only stole from the best) and finds he's not only the best pupil, but he can make enemies. In a boast, he calls up a spirit and brings out a sort of un-him. The un-him scars Sparrowhawk and kills the school's Archmage who uses his power to try and undo what Sparrowhawk has done.

Ged, Sparrowhawk's true name, must now pursue this unhim while fighting dragons, evil stones, and gibbeths, people the unhim have entered and destroyed.

Finally, Ged turns on his pursuer to fight an epic battle on the unsea and reunite himself.

LeGuin's spare prose is based on folktales, and myths, and Earthsea's theology of balance, true names, and magic is clear: Ged has disturbed the balance, so he must restore it. Like Tolkein's and Lewis' books, there is a sexual innocence here: Ged is a mage first and foremost: he feel attractions, but no lust. Of course, Heros of Myth are too good to be lustful; chastity preserves their power.

Unlike the other fantasies, the Earthsea Trilogy is not England, but an actual mythical place, albeit medieval in a European sense. Ged is no Englishman either, being copper-colored.

The deep understanding of what makes a culture a culture underlies everything LeGuin has written, from "The Dispossed" to "Terhanu." The intelligence behind these books is impressive, neither sentimental nor baroque, almost clinical in its portrayal of an premodern world where magic does work, and where every action has personal consequences and real pain.


Jungian psychology at its best...   May 29, 2000
 35 out of 38 found this review helpful

Not only is the "Earthsea" trilogy a wonderful series for adolescents but it also contains profound wisdom for adults seeking their own path to individuation. Rich in timeless myth, the series has the young mage Ged surmount many trials on his way to understanding himself and therein lies the key to his ultimately becomming the Archmage of Roke. Each book in the series has the main story turn on the issue of trust between two people and upon Ged's courage in facing dark issues either within himself or in the enviroment. Ged is a powerful role for young people developing a sense of their inner integrity and for middle-agers every where beginning to deal with their shadow issues. Of course there are plenty of dragons, battles, transformations and journeys which can be enjoyed simply as a good storey, but don't pass up the chance to re-read to catch the deeper meaning. This series is too good to be eclipsed in popularity by LOTR and the Chornicles of Narnia, "Earthsea" stands on its own! If I haven't convinced you, please read the essay by Noel Perrin in his book, "A Child's Delight."


A reference Book for Life's Dark Moments?   July 17, 1999
 21 out of 47 found this review helpful

A lot of people (usually the sort of techies that read sci-fi to jerk-off over descriptions of gadgets-mankind-has-never-seen-before) totally mis-understand this book. A lot of very young children who are asked to read under the misconception that it is for them, get confused. You'll find reviews from both sorts on this web-page.

The reason is that this is an allegory of emotional life. Ged is a fallible hero who has done something wrong and goes out to try and redeem himself. It's about adolescence and discovering your power and how to apply it to society. It's full of little gems of wisdom like the Arch-mage who dies quietly,going slowly down the road to the land of the Dead, as one who is familiar with that road. Wise men have faced death and have come to understand it.

People who have not lived do not understand this book. It is not really fantasy at all, but about a human being's emotional life. Not surprisingly it does not appeal to those who do not know how to live.

Unlike the simplicistic (racist, class conscious) plot of Tolkien, this book actually gives you something lasting to apply to life. And don't be put off-it does have odd moments of supreme drama. It develops at the pace that life develops for most of us fast and exciting at puberty / adolescence, quieter echoes later on. And it manages all this in a tiny slim paperback. Tell that to Tolkien.

The film-maker Powell/ Pressburger of A Matter of Life & Death fame (another superbly crafted allegory) wanted to make the film. Maybe this detail will afford an inroad to understanding to all those techies who couldn't find a logical, step by step plot that poked two fingers up their nostrils and dragged them thru the book?

This review is of the first book only.


A Small, But Perfect, Gem   November 22, 2000
 17 out of 18 found this review helpful

When I was about 7, my uncle gave the Earthsea Trilogy to my mother (a reading teacher) for her students to read. I remember reading a couple of chapters of one of them (Tombs of Atuan, I think) and finding it very exciting and mysterious, but also a little hard to understand (probably because I was starting in the middle of the series and because I was 7). Since then, I have often wanted to read the trilogy, but I had difficulty finding the books, which were out of print for most of the 1980s. I also was a little turned off because many people classify the trilogy as "young adult fiction," probably because they are relatively short.

I just finished a Wizard of Earthsea and I was surprised to find that it was one of the best fantasy book that I have ever read. Le Guin's narrative style in this book (which differs greatly from "Left Hand of Darkness" and its progeny--a style that I found to be a little plodding and self-indulgent) is very lean, almost minimalist. In this respect it reminds me of Michael Moorcock's Elric series. Unlike Moorcock, however, Le Guin conveys a rich emotional life for her characters. (This is not a criticism of Morcock, I think that he intentionally meant for the characters to remain somewhat distant and enigmatic--making them more like characters of myth and legend).

The back of the edition that I read claims that Le Guin has dethroned Tolkien as the ruler of epic fantasy. I wouldn't go that far. But she certainly deserves share the upper eschelon of fantasy writers with Tolkien and a very few other authors.