A Reading Recommendation: Ursula K Leguin's The Books Of Earthsea

a wonderful set of fantasy novels with deeply philosophical themes

As you may have noticed, my reading recommendations here tend to be shorter works. There’s a good reason for that, which perhaps I’ll write down a full discussion about at some later time. Suffice it to say, I know that for many readers in the present, time is often a precious resource, so sometimes the proverbial less really is more. I also tend to think that with less well-known authors, perhaps a short essay, work or dialogue can serve as the gateway to entice readers through, getting them interested in reading more of that author’s work.

This time around, my suggestion is a much longer work, one that runs 993 pages. It is literally heavy enough (over 5 pounds) to stop a door or crack nuts with! But that isn’t what you’ll want to do with it, if you get yourself a copy, or check one out from your local library. It’s titled The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition.

This is an omnibus volume of all of Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea stories and novels, along with an introduction by Leguin, her lecture “Earthsea Revisioned”, and her “Description of Earthsea”. It comes in hardcover, but is relatively inexpensive (you can get it on Amazon now for $39.99), and includes a variety of beautiful color and black-and-white sketches of scenes and characters from the stories by Charles Vess.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about these Earthsea stories and about the late great Ursula K. Leguin’s writing, thought, and life. The spur to that has been my editing Sadler’s Lectures podcast episodes on the fourth Earthsea novel, Tehanu, which has me listening to my own lectures on the themes, characters, plot points, and worldbuilding involved in that story. There’s a reason for me doing that editing work right now as well. I teach a semester-long academic class occasionally called “Philosophy and Fantasy: Ursula K Leguin’s Earthsea”, and I’m scheduled for a section of it this fall term.

We use this very handy omnibus volume for the class, and work our way through each of the six Earthsea books contained within it. In the first few weeks, we start by looking at an essay of Leguin’s not contained in the volume, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”, then read the first two standalone Earthsea stories, “The Rule of Names”, and “The Word of Unbinding”. These set the stage for the works that follow next.

We then spend six weeks on the original Earthsea trilogy, the three books that introduce us to the young apprentice and then mage Sparrowhawk/Ged, then the young priestess Arha/Tenar (involved with a still youthful Ged), and then the prince Arren/Lebannen (on a quest with the old archmage Ged). These are A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore.

Then we spend the next six weeks working through the three later books. Tehanu is the fourth Earthsea novel, and brings an older Tenar and Ged back together, as well as their adoptive daughter Therru, in ways that involve the dragons of Earthsea considerably more (including the oldest and most powerful one). The fifth book, Tales From Earthsea isn’t a novel, but a collection of stories, spanning centuries of time from the distant past when the Isle of Roke first arose as a place to learn magic to the time of the third, fourth, and sixth book. The series comes to a definitive close with the sixth book and fifth novel, The Other Wind.

To pack all six of these books, along with several other stories and features, into one volume less than a thousand pages, you can well imagine that those six books are not all that long. And that is a function of Leguin’s writing, which carries and bears a lot in each of her paragraphs, each of the interactions, explanations, or musings narrated. She has a genuine gift for producing works that you can read through quickly, and then discover more meaning unfolding for you with each subsequent read.

Are these books of philosophy? No, not at all. Are they philosophical novels? Definitely yes. And I should note that through a lot of would-be-interpreters have taken Leguin’s interest in Daoism and commitment to a kind of anarchism as their lenses for reading philosophy into the words, actions, and choices of her characters, there’s far more going on these works than studying those two traditions would help one find.

Leguin is almost never didactic in her prose. She saves that for her essay-writing, and these are not essays, but stories woven into a tapestry that is a secondary world. But for the reader who is attentive, careful, patient, there are many philosophical themes, problems, and perspectives there within these narratives. Issues of power, of rule, of decision-making, questions of good and evil, right and wrong, musings on the nature of language, thought, metaphysics, and knowledge, relations between genders and what genuine love requires of us. And since these are fantasy novels, there are dragons, mages, wizards, witches, barbarians, kingdoms, pirates, musicians, and everyday craftpeople and workers, and the stories range over all the peoples (including, as we find out the dragons) of the archipelago of Earthsea.

For me - and this is something else I’ve been meaning to write on for a long time, but can only mention today - the stories evoke a deep emotional resonance within me. Perhaps because I read the original trilogy as a middle schooler, in dark and lonely times. I find it challenging to teach, to lecture in videos, to write, sometimes even to read these stories, because they both fill me with joy and appreciation and at the same time can bring me to tears. That’s the power of Leguin’s understated work.

So, if you are looking for a set of classic fantasy works, set within a world you can explore and be caught up within through your reading, which will provoke philosophical reflection on your part, I highly recommend The Books Of Earthsea to you.

Of course, you need not get this massive tome that bundles all the stories together. You can find and read these books separately from each other (in which case, you’d also want to check out the collection of stories The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, which contains those first two early Earthsea stories). You’ll likely find copies of all of them available at your local library, since they remain popular and in circulation. But if you do want them all together, along with the wonderful illustrations the stories inspired within Charles Vess, perhaps you’d like to get that volume. (If you do purchase it through using the Amazon affiliate link, they pay me a little bit of the price).

One last note about Leguin’s Earthsea works. Down the line, I’m planning on putting together an course or two for the general public that will cover roughly the same ground as the 15-week academic course I’ve been teaching. I’m hoping to bring that out sometime in late Fall this year.

If you have previously read any of Ursula K Leguin’s Earthsea novels or stories, or if you come back to this recommendation post after having read them, feel free to leave a comment with your own take on them!