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The Earthsea Cycle
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Reviewed by Christopher DeFilippis

Despite its longevity, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle remains largely unheralded in the world of literate Fantasy, overshadowed by the juggernauts that are The Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

Earthsea’s only real mass exposure to today’s Fantasy fans was an abortion of a miniseries that Sci-Fi Channel aired some time back. It stands as, hands down, one of the worst novel-to-film adaptations ever made, treating the source material with downright contempt.

Which is a real shame, because the truth is that Earthsea is superior to both Rings and Narnia. It is a universe with far more heft and realism than the fairytale-esque Narnia, and is just as will drawn as Middle Earth without any of Tolkien’s considerable mythic baggage. Modern audiences really need a proper introduction to the material.

The first Earthsea book, A Wizard of Earthsea, was my first genre novel, which I chanced to pick up because I liked the dragon on the cover. I never suspected it would make a man out of me.

Ursula K. Le Guin introduced a fantasy universe that had everything a then-bored 14-year-old had been looking for, namely magic and wonder and mystery and wizardry and adventure. But it was also filled with darkness and shadows and pride and comeuppance and accountability and a wholly adult sensibility that was absent in the books I had been wasting my time on until then.

The story of Ged—a young man struggling to come to terms with his considerable powers for wizardry and all of their inherent responsibility—actually made me think about the kind of person I was, and the kind of person I did and didn’t want to be. I probably read it about four times that year, along with its two sequels, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. But you never forget your first, and though more than 20 years has elapsed since that afternoon in my local library, A Wizard of Earthsea remains my favorite book of all time.

Ged, a blacksmith’s son from a small village on the isle of Gont, shows an unusual talent for magic. But he’s impatient, and soon chafes under the measured tutelage of Ogion, the local wizard who has apprenticed him. Ged is brilliant but arrogant, thirsty for knowledge and power that he doesn’t yet have the wisdom to handle. At an impasse, Ogion reluctantly sends Ged off to Roke, the fabled school of wizardry. See? And I bet you thought Harry Potter was original…

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