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bloodygranuaile) wrote2022-12-16 10:49 am
bloodygranuaile) wrote2022-12-16 10:49 am
More on unbuilding walls
Completing my journey through Earthsea, I read Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Other Wind, the final installment of what she apparently liked to call the Earthsea Trilogies.
This is a weird one–not that the others were particularly normal–which gets deep into the root of the relationship between humans, magic, dragons, and death. It brings together all our old favorite characters and a couple of new ones on a strange little quest to make restitution for the ancient betrayal of the agreement between men and dragons that was made when they split into two species. This quest is precipitated when the spirits in the land of the dead, a gloomy grey place that Ged and Lebannen visited in book 4, start channeling their desire to be free through the dreams of a kind widowed village sorcerer of medium magical talents. In this one, our motley crew of heroes–minus Ged, who stays home to keep house–has to reconcile the differences between the mythology of the people of the Archipelago, dragon mythology, and Kargish mythology in order to figure out what they must do, after which doing it is taxing (and costly) but nevertheless the easy part.
Our old standby characters–namely Ged and Tenar–have gone past middle-aged and are now squarely elders, and our former child and adolescent heroes have now grown up into youngish adults, but nevertheless adults. They have all learned things over the course of their previous adventures and do a lot of thinking and talking about what they have–and have not–figured out about life and death and society. It’s a very philosophical book, as most of Le Guin’s are. However it is also pleasingly filled with dragons and ghosts and sea voyages and wizards, and even some cute animal companions, a staple of fantasy writing that Le Guin doesn’t often employ.
Overall this was definitely the thematic final stand the series needed, even if it wasn’t a final climactic battle or any of the things you’d expect. Knocking over a wall seems pretty in keeping with Le Guin’s general philosophy and politics, though.
This is a weird one–not that the others were particularly normal–which gets deep into the root of the relationship between humans, magic, dragons, and death. It brings together all our old favorite characters and a couple of new ones on a strange little quest to make restitution for the ancient betrayal of the agreement between men and dragons that was made when they split into two species. This quest is precipitated when the spirits in the land of the dead, a gloomy grey place that Ged and Lebannen visited in book 4, start channeling their desire to be free through the dreams of a kind widowed village sorcerer of medium magical talents. In this one, our motley crew of heroes–minus Ged, who stays home to keep house–has to reconcile the differences between the mythology of the people of the Archipelago, dragon mythology, and Kargish mythology in order to figure out what they must do, after which doing it is taxing (and costly) but nevertheless the easy part.
Our old standby characters–namely Ged and Tenar–have gone past middle-aged and are now squarely elders, and our former child and adolescent heroes have now grown up into youngish adults, but nevertheless adults. They have all learned things over the course of their previous adventures and do a lot of thinking and talking about what they have–and have not–figured out about life and death and society. It’s a very philosophical book, as most of Le Guin’s are. However it is also pleasingly filled with dragons and ghosts and sea voyages and wizards, and even some cute animal companions, a staple of fantasy writing that Le Guin doesn’t often employ.
Overall this was definitely the thematic final stand the series needed, even if it wasn’t a final climactic battle or any of the things you’d expect. Knocking over a wall seems pretty in keeping with Le Guin’s general philosophy and politics, though.