These illustrations are kind of whack. All the characters look like little goblins.
But Le Guin’s Earthsea series is fantastic.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s conclusion to her fantastic Earthsea series. Once again, she manages to create a fantasy world where violence doesn’t solve everything. Her characters engage in the mundane activities that real people do most of the time: chat, make friends, think about their loved ones, cuddle with their pets, etc. The way she writes these mundane scenes makes them feel just as important and interesting as they really are.
The king was pregnant.
An anthropologist-like character lands on a planet with people who exhibit sexually differentiated physical characteristics, male or female depending on the circumstances, for a few days every month.
Genly Ai’s task is to convince them to join the coalition of planets he comes from.
Le Guin uses this framework to explore the various ways in which this physical ambisexuality affects their society and, in doing so, explores how sex and gender affect our own.
The most well put together rendition of the Tao Te Ching I’ve read with commentary and thoughts throughout from my lord and savior Ursula K. Le Guin.
You can’t go wrong with this one.
A collection of short stories and novellas set in the Earthsea setting that Ursula wrote to help her find out how to continue the story when prompted to do so by her publisher.
There’s some great stories here but I prefer the Earthsea novels to this generally (don’t get me started on The Farthest Shore).
A sequel to both The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore.
Considering how uninteresting The Farthest Shore is, I’m confident saying that you can skip that book and go straight to Tehanu.
Hasn’t aged as well as the first two books in the series IMO.
It’s kind of a retread of the first book with a little bit of the 80s crack epidemic and reganomics commentary spliced into it. It’s not as evergreen as the other books.
1/3 essays about life 1/3 book forewords 1/3 book reviews
All written by Ursula K. Le Guin between 2000 and 2016.
Ursula K. Le Guin is great, so to no one’s surprise there’s a lot to love about this text.
Le Guin mostly successful attempt to write a story in the world of a Wizard of Earthsea told from the perspective of a girl and, eventually, woman.
Ged shows up and steals the show a little bit from Tenar which Le Guin will rectify in the subsequent novels.
There’s a, soon-to-be wizard, on a archipelago world. He goes to wizard school and becomes xXx#1_Mage_NAxXx.
A classic fantasy story elevated by Le Guin’s poetic use of words. Struggles to give women in the story the story they deserve, an issue dealt with in the subsequent novels.
