Friday, May 20, 2011

Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

Title A Wizard of Earthsea
By Ursula K. Le Guin
For Book club
Source Mom's Library




Synopsis
Trying to impress his wizard friends Ged releases an evil shadow and grows up trying to stop the evil he has unleashed.

General thoughts
First of all, sorry about my synopsis I hate trying to explain what a book was about. You can always check the Goodreads synopsis. So, that being said....on to my thoughts. This is one of those books that isn't a book, it's a story. The kind of story you want to kneel at the authors knee and hear in their own voice. I was pleasantly surprised with this one; I thought it was going to be slow moving and hard to read but I ended up really enjoying it and taking away some good messages from it. Of course, the first being how pride can make us do stupid things. But more than that: you can't run from your mistakes forever, or evil  at some point you're going to have to see evil, truly see it and overcome it. (that's just what I took away from it. I know some people would wholeheartedly disagree with me but that's OK)  All in all, I enjoyed it and am interested in reading the rest of the series.

Characters
I won't go into a all the characters and how I felt about them because I didn't find this book necessarily about the characters. Don't get me wrong I rolled my eyes at Ged's pride and was relieved at his humility but I took more away from the character's progression than the characters themselves.

Would I recommend it? 
Yes, of course.

8 comments:

  1. Hi, Jenny. I actually tried to read this one years ago but got sidetracked and never picked it back up. I'll have to give it another shot.

    To answer the question you left on my review, yes, I would recommend reading The Strange Case of Finley Jayne before The Girl in the Steel Corset. It takes place just before the events in TGitSC, so it should help to establish some things. I haven't read TGinSC yet, but I have it on NetGalley and will read it very soon.

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  2. Marla, Thanks for getting back to me. My book club wasn't really a huge fan of A Wizard of Earthsea either so don't feel bad.

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  3. I haven't read any of Le Guin's books yet but I always stop by them when I see them in the library. I'll have to pick the first book.

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  4. That is the tidiest summary I ever did see. :)

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  5. Kaye, I want to read some of her other books that aren't in this series too.

    Jessica, Thank you??? ;)

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  6. I read those books when I worked at Aspen and liked them but I tried to read it again an got side tracked and then Rob didn't really like the last one so I haven't tried again. Half of the comments I leave on your blog don't actually post. I wonder why?

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  7. +JMJ+

    I read this many years ago and remember the details very vaguely--but do remember very clearly that I felt it was one of the best books I had ever read.

    But I still like your description of it as a story rather than a book. LeGuin's prose evokes exactly the kind of atmosphere we expect an old text from an oral tradition to bear.

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  8. Enbrethiliel, I couldn't have said it better myself!

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