BOOK REVIEW – URSULA LE GUIN – A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA 1968 Penguin Books.
The first novel in the poetic and mystical fantasy Earthsea series. A Wizard is a short novel with the feel of an epic. It tells the story of Ged, a young wizard and his efforts to put right a terrible mistake made in anger and naivety.
Earthsea is a series of small archipelago islands in a vast ocean. Magic is strong, and depends on knowing the true name of a person or thing to be able to control, change or destroy it. Wizardry is largely a case of learning the true names of all that exists in the world, but much remains unknown. People are careful to reveal their own true names only to those who they can trust, as a name gives a wizard power over someone or something.
On one island, the young Ged overhears a witch citing a spell, and he repeats the spell without knowing its meaning, only to find the effects work better for him than for her. The witch teaches him her limited control of weather, plant life, and communication with animals, but her own magical knowledge is very limited.
When the island is invaded by a marauding army, Ged uses his control of the mist to confound the attackers and saves the island with just a few of his own people getting killed by the defeated forces. Ged’s action draws him to the attention of a powerful wizard who takes him under his charge to teach him much more than the witch ever had.
The wizard teaches Ged his true name. Ged is Sparrowhawk. However, the wizard is mainly concerned with contemplation and meditation, so his teachings are slow and reflective. Ged is over eager to learn more quickly. He steals a look at his master’s spell-name books and uses a spell from one to try to raise a dead spirit. His master stops the experiment in its tracks and warns that something so terrible could never be allowed.
Frustrated by such slow teachings, Sparrowhawk is given an opportunity to go to the main wizarding school on an island, where there is more focus on doing magic than on learning it. Ged takes the decision to go, and he learns quickly,
However, Ged is still arrogant and impatient, and he has a rival called Jasper who seems to do better than him at everything. Ged is keen to prove he can do better, and eventually, he again tries to raise a dead spirit. This time he is apparently successful, and the entity raised tries to attack him, shocking Jasper and others. A wizard –teacher tries to drive off the spirit, and succeeds in sending it away, but he dies from the exertion.
Ged now finds the creature-giving chase to him, and not knowing its true name, he feels powerless to stop it. To protect his friends, he sets off on a journey round Earthsea, playing a game of cat and mouse as he and the entity pursue each other. On his quest, Ged stops to take down a powerful dragon and its children, and almost falls foul of a powerful sorceress who wants to release a great evil confined within the fabric of her castle.
Sparrowhawk, accompanied by a friend from his old wizard school, finally takes on the spirit pursuing him from a small boat on open ocean, beyond the limits of all known land – when the entity approaches, Ged gives it his own name, Sparrowhawk, and he is now reunited with his own shadow self – the creature was not from the dead, but represents all his own unknown potential and fate. Ged / Sparrowhawk is now whole again, and the story ends. It’s a powerful, and very well written story with much more fallible wizards than those of Tolkien or Rowling, and achieving as much in a slender volume as they do over several larger books. Several further Earthsea stories were to follow.
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
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