A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA

[lunabee34]

thelastgoodname and I are once again reading kid lit--this time Ursula K. LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea series.

SPOILERS FOR A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA

On the whole I did not enjoy this book. It was too interior of the mind, too devoid of human relationships, too bereft of dialogue. I have realized that when too many pages go by without dialogue, I start to get BORED! Also, the lack of chicks in this books is super annoying.

I liked the emphasis on and significance of names. I liked pretty much every part when Ged was speaking to and interacting with other people (or even creatures) but those were too few and too far between. I think the last three pages of the book were my absolute favorite because he and Vetch were, you know, DOING STUFF and TALKING TO EACH OTHER.

I honestly have nothing to say about this book other than, "I read it."


I've finished the next book, The Tombs of Atuan, and I have much to say about it, so the series does get better, thank goodness.

Comments

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I didn't like it either, but for a completely different reason: Ged's an idiot. I know his idiocy had to be played up in the first part so that he would do something really, really dumb, and I know it's a kid's book and kids can't do subtle or something, but the guy's an idiot. I'm just not interested in him. (This could make the rest of the books somewhat difficult for me.)

The missing women were really, really noticeable. The gender relations on Earthsea are extremely problematic, in fact, given the facts of the first book: women aren't allowed to do much of anything, including travel from island to island, it seems (all the people on all the boats were men). And if women aren't allowed to become wizards, but Ged has all this innate power, well that speaks to a sort of biological determinism that I'm really not happy with. Not to mention the "women's magic" is of a lower class -- and men can learn it -- while "real magic" is not given to women. If LeGuin doesn't do something about this in later books -- at least acknowledge it -- I'm going to be very unhappy.

As for Vetch, he was a cypher -- I know nothing about him except that he's a big guy who loves his family. Of course, other than Ged having a temper and a self-esteem problem, I know nothing about him, either.

I liked it a lot more than most of the Dark Is Rising books, though. (Except for The Grey King, which it turns out I sort of enjoyed and would read again many time before I picked up this one again.)

I've started The Tombs of Atuan, so I'll probably post on that soonish.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Did you realize Ged is black?

I admit I didn't read this book all that carefully so I may have missed a discussion of this but I didn't realize until the second book when his darkness is commented on that he is black.

I don't know if the idea of women and power is going to be addressed to your satisfaction, but it's certainly addressed interestingly in the second book.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I got the feeling he wasn't black so much as very dark -- dark south indian, maybe -- because there are people who are described as darker and people who are lighter in the first book (as I recall). So yeah, I noticed, but I don't know if that's because I actually noticed, or because I remember the huge wank when SciFi did that miniseries a few years ago and had an all-white cast because no one had ever read the books, I guess.

And I checked wikipedia, and the fourth book is evidently about the stuff I'm interested in, so we'll see. So far, The Tombs of Atuan is at least acknowledging that gender and gendered power relations exist, which makes a nice change.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Whatever the characterization in the first, in Tombs he is described as very dark skinned and I totally missed that in the first one. Oh well.

I am really interested to see what you have to say about Tombs. While there were still long stretches with no dialogue that kinda bugged me, I liked that one so much more than the first and at least in the parts with no dialogue, Tenar was actually thinking about interesting things, unlike Ged.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I'll probably post tomorrow, then.

And if we can find them, I'd love to add Green Knowe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Knowe) to our list, because they sound really interesting. I'm not sure what age their intended for, though.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I am down with that. I've never heard, but that can be a good thing.

And one day in the future, I want us to do Robin McKinley's The Hero and The Crown and The Blue Sword.

[jadelennox]

Green Knowe I'd call maybe for 10 year olds. Don't hold out hope for radical gender or race politics in those, Treasure of Green Knowe notwithstanding. They're the ultimate English country house fantasies.

I love them, but then, well... *points to icon*

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Then maybe I'll just read them on my own; they sound interesting, as long as I know not to have many expectations.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*icon love*

[leavethesky.livejournal.com]

You know, when I read these books, I was so used to NOT seeing women heroes in my favorite books that I just read Ged as female and ignored the rest. Reading them now, I get angry at the sexism or just the absence of women. I know that in the more recently published Earthsea books, Le Guin has attempted a sort of revisionist history of her own world, putting women in places of power and even revealing 'witches' to be the true wizards in a few wizarding legends mentioned in the first books.

Are you reading on or stopping at Tombs?

Also, am I even allowed in here? *looks around* Sorry, came in through your LJ, thelastgoodname.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I would have loved to read Ged as female, or at least gender-neutral. But she goes to such lengths to insist that no women are ever wizards and witches are basically frauds that I can't quite imagine how this is going to play out in the later books. If I thought she were doing it as social commentary, I'd feel a lot better. But I don't think that's it at all.

We're completists, so we're going the whole way, regardless; we read all the Dark Is Rising books, even though neither of us was particularly enthused, for some of the same reasons. If Harry Potter has nothing else going for it, at least it has this: there are women, smart women, powerful women, women who could be heroes. And more than one, even! I got a book of short stories, too, which evidently has a few Earthsea stories, so we'll see how those go, too.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

This must mean you've posted on Tombs.

Yay!

*goes to see*

Also, I just finished the Great Tag Redo of Aught Eight. It took a long time, but my tags are finally in order and *useful*.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I get my own tag! And this is how I discover that we were supposed to be reading L'Engle. We were? Oops. I clearly totally dropped that ball. I'm very sorry. Next? (Or, no, you had something else in mind, right?)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeee. Of course you get your own tag. :)

I think what happened with the L'Engle is that we read the first one and then either you or I got busy and we kinda just forgot about finishing it. If you want to go back to it, we can or I'm cool with forging ahead and doing something else if you'd rather.

[jadelennox]

(Lunabee, hi, poking in my head from tlg's place)

Oh, trust me, it's social commentary. And she recants her previous political philosophy with every book! Tombs was a reaction to gender in Wizard, and at the time, was reasonably feminist. When you're done with the series, you might want to read some of her commentary on it, which is fascinating stuff.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Social commentary with hindsight, or intentionally from the start? If, as you say, Tehanu was a response to Tombs, then she's growing as she's writing (which is great for her as a person and a writer, but less so for a reader reading the books in one go).

And yeah, Tombs was exactly what I would have expected from the time and the person (in a good way).

[jadelennox]

I think when she wrote Tombs, she was bringing female protagonists intentionally into an all male world, and she did it in a way which made sense at the time. Years later, she looked back at her own strange attempts at gender politics and was appalled, and that comes out in Tehanu. So yes, it's weird for the reader reading in one go.

It's strange for me, because she became much more of a gender feminist than I am. But reading the books as the development of a writer is fascinating to me. As opposed to when I was little and was just thrilled to have Tenar at all (in those pre-Tamora Peirce pre-Robin McKinley days, when Tenar was the best we got).

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*waves*

Hi. :)

I think I will check out the commentary. That sounds interesting to me.

Welcome!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Absolutely you're allowed. I wish that more people would read with us, so I'm very glad that you commented. :)

It's so interesting to me because this is the first Ursula K. I've read and I didn't know anything about her and I've always had this unsubstantiated notion of her as a feminist in the back of my mind. So when we started reading this series, I was really shocked.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

She really is more feminist than this, though. Her stuff for adults is good (what little of it I've read).