The Books of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
31 comments
·April 28, 2025dcminter
I enjoyed this review and thought the point about "whiplash" with Tehanu was well observed.
I read Tehanu roughly when it came out, so I'd have been about 18, having read the others much earlier. I was annoyed and disliked it due to the tonal change.
I re-read it again a year or so ago along with the short stories and The Other Wind. I loved it. Nothing had changed - except me, of course.
zem
same, I used to skip tehanu when I reread the series, but find it an excellent book today. it also helps that it's now the start of a second trilogy, so the shift from the first trilogy isn't really an issue. (I think younger me would have enjoyed tehanu greatly as a standalone book, it just wasn't the conclusion to the earthsea trilogy I wanted)
pizzathyme
As a kid, I always thought the “coding language” of magic in these books was clever. If you know the secret magical name of something, then you can speak to it in the secret magical language, and it will obey you. This had built-in scaling limits, for example, if you wanted to conjure a tidal wave, then you would need to know the names of millions of droplets of water, which naturally means a tidal wave spell is going to be very long winded and difficult to cast.
danielodievich
I have the omnibus edition that they have in this review. It is a gorgeous book, although still likely not as lovely as Folio Society's https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/books-of-earthsea.html. The paper is very white, with the reading light behind it is almost a bit too white/reflective. But great in ambient light. Charles Vess' illustrations are amazing, although there are just too few of them. I got spoiled at his glorious and PLENTIFUL work on Sandman and Stardust. Nevertheless, excellent packaging for incredible series of stories.
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fmajid
I have that omnibus edition. Bought it for my then newborn daughter when it came out (and have them all in eBook format as well), but have yet to convince her to read it, or The Hobbit.
It is available as an eBook in the UK for a ridiculously cheap £5.99.
https://books.apple.com/gb/book/the-books-of-earthsea-the-co...
https://www.gollancz.co.uk/news/2018/10/17/the-books-of-eart...
mzs
Read The Hobbit to her, a bit at each bedtime. Make-up funny voices for the characters. My oldest son is now 24 and it's one of his fav memories just the both of us.
ChrisMarshallNY
Loved these books.
Did not love the television mini-series.
I may just get that book.
I have the Frankenstein book, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bernie_Wrightson_s_Fran...
fmajid
You're not alone. Ursula K. Le Guin hated the TV series, not least the casting of white actors for Ged, who is clearly described as dark-skinned in the books.
Mistletoe
Do you like the animated one by Miyazaki’s son?
ChrisMarshallNY
Never saw that one.
Mistletoe
I haven’t finished it yet but I like it ok as a newcomer to Earthsea. I certainly don’t think it was bad enough for his Dad to walk out of the theater at the premiere.
morkalork
Fun fact: she coined the word Ansible. I had no idea until reading one of her books recently and thinking "Ansible? Like the software?"
rrauenza
I always thought it was Card who invented it for Ender's Game. (He borrowed it)
Thanks for the fun fact!
hinkley
No he cribbed that from the Hainish Cycle and kept the mechanism. Just read that last summer and was whaaaaat.
matthewdgreen
Silicon Valley loves to mine the fantasy and science fiction genre for their company names. At least the ansible is a generally neutral device (with some crummy side effects, as discussed in Le Guin stories) whereas naming something "Palantir" is to miss the whole damn point.
CobrastanJorji
Palantir is an excellent, AMAZING name for that company. It screams "we spy on people around the world: their pasts, their present, their very thoughts. We serve corrupt powers that pretend to be pure and good. We are a tool to enable the strong to dominate the weak. The data we produce will be misinterpreted to disastrous results."
I dont know if Thiel intended to convey that, but it's exactly the same name that I would've picked for that company.
hinkley
One day soon we will lose our fucking minds and start attacking former friends and allies.
o11c
"Far-seeing, but dangerously corrupted" fits either Palantir quite well.
mcphage
The last Earthsea book change its world in a way which is unique (or at least rare), even in fantasy series. I won’t say it here for spoiler reasons, but it’s really quite wonderful. The whole series is absolutely worth reading.
clircle
Author used to be an Emacs maintainer, FYI.
me_smith
I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.
barbazoo
Reminds me of Goodreads.
> I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.
> 5/5
me_smith
Ha. Fair enough. I'll report back once I read it. I don't have a Goodreads account so I'm making up for it here I guess.
brador
First 2 are great, next 4 start to drag but you’re invested in seeing how things turn out.
sharkjacobs
I was really excited for the release of that omnibus, I remember actually marking it on my calendar lmao and then I physically handled it and realized it was too big to actually hold and read.
I checked it out from the library instead and spent a day leafing through it admiring the illustrations and reading some of the additional stories and afterwords that I hadn't seen before
sharkjacobs
I just searched my calendar for "Earthsea" and found the entry, Oct 23, 2018: "The Books of Earthsea hit stores"
user982
My copy came with the color illustrations stuck to their facing pages.
The (also awesome) writer Jo Walton wrote a great celebration of Ursula Le Guin's life. She wrote in part:
She widened the space of science fiction with what she wrote. She got in there with a crowbar and expanded the field and made it a better field… Le Guin expanded the possibilities for all of us, and then she kept on doing that. She didn’t repeat herself. She kept doing new things. She was so good. I don’t know if I can possibly express how good she was.
https://reactormag.com/bright-the-hawks-flight-in-the-empty-...