books 2012: A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea #1), by Ursula K. Le Guin

[supercheesegirl]

I'd forgotten just how good the Earthsea novels are, and they only get better from here. This one introduces us to Ged, Le Guin's Earthsea hero, and we see his childhood and his first major challenge as a wizard. Ged's not as fully developed a character as we see in Le Guin's later work (I don't feel like I know Ged or can really picture him at this point, not like I can later on in Earthsea or like I can with Tenar even though she's not even in this book and I haven't seen her in years), but I do like that Ged's still not a perfect person - he's smart, talented, and courageous, but he has faults, and his pride and anger are what bring on the danger that nearly kills him. In that sense, A Wizard of Earthsea is a coming of age story because Ged has to face the darkest parts of himself. I'm really looking forward to rereading the whole series.

Interestingly, I noted to F that the back cover describes this novel as a "recognized classic of high fantasy", and he wondered what exactly that means. I could cite him some of the obvious others - Tolkien, McKillip's Riddlemaster series - but I had trouble defining exactly what "high fantasy" means. There's a formality to the language, I think, and a sense that the stakes are very high in the battle between good and evil, and the main characters are usually the ones who are pivotal in that battle. I also feel like there's a space between the reader and the story; maybe it's just that high fantasy is usually written in third person, so we don't necessarily know the protagonist's deepest thoughts and feelings. I'm trying to think what else would be considered "high fantasy". Not Harry Potter, I don't think; although the scale is epic enough, the books feel too intimate to me. And not Fritz Lieber, because although I love Fafhrd and the Mouser, I think the stakes aren't high enough in most of their adventures - they go out looking for trouble and fortune, they're not trying to save the world. Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake comes close in terms of the formal language, but I'm not sure if the stakes are high enough there either. Possibly early Pern? Really interested to hear what you think.

Comments

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

Pern is Sci-Fi though.

I think Robert Jordan is High Fantasy. Anything that falls under the umbrella of "Fat Fantasy with Maps"?

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Well, technically Pern is sci fi, but you don't necessarily know that if you start with the Dragonflight/Dragonquest/White Dragon trilogy. The space travel and genetic engineering stuff doesn't touch those characters, and in some ways it's just an excuse to grow some dragons. Similarly, McIntyre's Dreamsnake clearly takes place in a distant future, but the world created is a fantasy world, not a technological sci fi world. Someone might make the same argument for Dune, possibly, but I haven't read those so I don't know what the sci fi/fantasy breakdown is there - I would guess there's a lot more sci fi in Dune than there is in Pern.

I see the sense behind the Jordan classification. I'm still pissed at him for stretching it out so long, though; the early books are terrific, but the later books are just so rambling and HUGE that I don't want to put the whole series into a category generally acknowledged as "classic" and "good".

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

But Pern was written to be Sci Fi. I think that authorial intent needs to count at least a little bit. And if you go back and reread, the "this is set in the future" foreshadowing gets a whole lot clearer.

Well. I think that if you think of High Fantasy as a sub genre, a *flavor* of fantasy, then of course there will be stuff that's better and stuff that's less good. There's a certain impulse to catergorize "High Fantasy" as more intellectual than other flavors of fantasy, and therefore better, but I think that the Fat Fantasy With Maps can be good or bad.

Some things I tend to think go with "High Fantasy":
- stories told on a grand scale - the fate of the world is at stake.
- second world, rather than set on Earth
- that third-person distance can be a factor, but Earthsea is pretty intimate in a lot of ways.
- Quests.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Earthsea really varies in a lot of ways, including voice and the distance of the third-person narrator. The original trilogy feels quite different to me than the later books (although not inconsistently, I think, but then I can find no fault with anything Le Guin ever does).

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Actually, High Fantasy has a fairly simple definition, IIRC: it refers to novels or series that take place entirely within the fantasy world, without any contact with our own muggle everyday world. Which rules in LOTR, Earthsea, et al, and rules out Potter, Thomas Covenant, et al.

ETA: Also rules in that goofy series w/ Wuntvor & Ebenezum and rules out Narnia!

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! Makes for a very clearcut definition, I like it. Thanks for commenting!