PhilPaine.com

I decid­ed to read through the well-known series of juve­nile fan­tasy that I nev­er got around to read­ing. Lequin’s Earth­sea books are wide­ly admired. Cer­tainly, the first vol­ume starts off well. The fan­tasy world is well-con­struct­ed, with the geog­ra­phy metic­u­lously thought out. Things move along quick­ly, because the prose style is very lean, with only the odd bit of con­crete, sen­sory descrip­tion thrown in judi­ciously. I would nev­er right that “thin” a prose myself, but LeGuin seems to be able to get away with it. The main char­ac­ter, Ged, is a bit of a stick of wood. I found myself pic­tur­ing him as Wes­ley Crush­er dressed up in a wiz­ard cloak. The drag­on is the best char­ac­ter. The sec­ond book was unfo­cused, the third was a good read, but recy­cled the themes of the first, and the fourth, writ­ten a full twen­ty-two years after the first, was down­right bor­ing. There was a fifth, pub­lished in 2001, which I haven’t even looked for. I would have to say that only the first vol­ume real­ly inspired me, and that it sup­plied all that I need­ed from the series.