He stood tall and proud as the mighty oak whilst the wind whipped his mysterious and scarred visage and lightning broke the dark, stormy sky behind him. He wore simple tweed britches, hand sewn leathern booties and the shaggy fleece of the flippitytoot, from his native lands of Giveashit, for warmth against the harsh winter. He carried a staff of Baobab, palladian shod. They called him Pidge but his true name, in the ancient, primordial tongue of the Snifftyflob, was MageLord 3000.
I should preface these ramshackle reflections by saying I am not usually a reader of the ‘fantasy genre’, depending on how it’s defined. First, it strikes me that a lot of fantasy books are about a fairly narrow cast of wizards, dragons, witches and ogres. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with those types of characters. They don’t pique my interest much. On the whole, I tend to think to myself, rightly or wrongly, ‘humanity is interesting and varied enough for me I’ll probably leave the fantasy for another day’.
The prose in the book wasn’t much to my liking and I found it meandering, facil and cliched. It was never pithy or concise and was often confusing and verbose. I found a lot of the characters and scenes to be overwritten and full of romantic nostalgia for the world she’s created for them. ‘What do you expect from a fantasy novel?’, you might ask.
I got more enjoyment out of the themes in the book, for example, the idea in the first book of Ged battling against the darkness, which he has created, to save his life and identity. At other points, I felt like it was too much of a mish mash of borrowed ideas, for example, light and darkness (Bible), a young man going on a journey to establish his own identity (Greek epic, Jung). One theme I thought a bit ridiculous was the desperate attempt to establish a positive female perspective in the fourth book. In the preceding three books women are depicted as crafty seductresses (Ged in garden, Book 1) or evil devil worshippers and child sacrificers (Order of Preistesses, Book 2). However, in the fourth book there is an abrupt change from men, mage lords and mighty staff wielding wizardry to a focus on mothering, nurture and the importance of domesticity and anything relating to women while men are scolded instead.
Book 2 was an impressive piece of writing and struck me as the most creative perhaps because it wasn’t full of ‘fantasy’ characters from central casting. In fairness to Le Guin, it’s possible that I find some of her characters and style hackneyed because so many people have copied it. I have read that some people consider her incredibly influential and innovative but I am not really in a position to comment.
This wasn’t a book that I enjoyed or would recommend because it is too long, the prose is bad and there aren’t enough good themes or characters to make it worthwhile. Books 1 & 2 are certainly better than 3 & 4 and would be enough to get a taste of her style. That said my favourite character was from Book 3, so there you go. It was Sopli.
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