Synopsis
URSULA K. LE GUIN’S FANTASY MASTERPIECE, COMPLETE IN THE DEFINITIVE LIBRARY OF AMERICA EDITION OF HER WORKS
“To return to Earthsea today is to encounter a different kind of fantasy work, where knowing oneself is a painstaking, ceaseless endeavor. . . . It is what the story is about, and the wonders Earthsea offers are scaled accordingly, to the sublime horizons of a life.” —Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels and stories are set in the far-flung archipelago of Earthsea. The original three novels in the 1960s and 70s were the first and most successful of the descendants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and were the progenitors, in their turn, of all the wizard school and dragonlord fantasy series that have come since. But then Le Guin returned 18 years later, after “all the thought and rethinking of the second wave of feminism,” with 3 more novels to complete the series. Now, all 6 books are featured in Library of America’s The Complete Earthsea, a handsome, heirloom boxed set.
Included are:
- A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the original wizard school fantasy, follows a young man called Sparrowhawk, whose true name—a source of power not to be shared with others—is Ged, as he both learns to wield the magic in him and discovers its shadow side.
- In The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Le Guin’s focus shifts to a young woman whose true name was taken from her when she became priestess of the Nameless Ones, the dark old powers of Earthsea. When Ged arrives to steal her temple’s greatest treasure, Tenar recovers her name and learns the gifts of interdependence and weakness.
- And in The Farthest Shore (1972), Ged is Archmage of all Earthsea when he embarks on a long journey with the teenage Prince Arren to find out why magic seems to be draining out of the Archipelago, a journey that will lead them to the end of the world and the dry land of death beyond.
- Tehanu (1990), in which the widowed Tenar adopts a badly burned and abandoned child, a girl she names Tehanu. When Ged returns to Gont after losing his magic, Tenar helps him learn to live on the edge of things, even while an evil mage threatens their new life.
- Tales from Earthsea (2001) both reaches back in time to explore the beginnings of the school for mages on Roke and of Ged’s teacher Ogion, and, in “Dragonfly,” introduces Irian, a woman who realizes that she is other than what she seems.
- In The Other Wind (2001) Irian meets Tehanu after Alder, a village sorcerer, travels in search of Ged to find out why he dreams every night that the stone wall that divides Earthsea from the Dry Land of death is crumbling. The answer turns out to have to do with Tehanu, Irian, and the people like them—and with the origin of magic in Earthsea.
Le Guin’s Earthsea is one of the most beloved and influential fantasy series of the 20th century.
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About the Author
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was the recipient of multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Brian Attebery, editor, is emeritus professor of English at Idaho State University. He won the World Fantasy Award in 2021 for his editing of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and has received the SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship, the IAFA Award for Distinguished Scholarship and two Mythopoeic Awards for myth and fantasy studies. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler. His most recent book is Fantasy: How It Works, published by Oxford University Press in 2022. In 2019 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Fantasy Literature at the University of Glasgow.
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