Just read A Wizard of Earthsea

As a longtime science fiction and fantasy reader, I have seen Ursula K. Le Guin’s name come up time and again, but had never picked up one of her books.

I’ve been working on my own fantasy-adjacent novel over the last year, and have struggled to give the story a sense of place. I picked the book up based on a nudge from my mate Richard and am glad that I did.

The book has a curious style - there’s scant interiority and the story often skips over moments and character beats that other novels would sink chapters into. In that way it kind of reminds me of Dennis E. Taylor’s Bobiverse series. It takes some adjustment, I found that I read it slower, taking time to fill in the gaps myself. It made me work more to picture this world, but the world itself felt quite well-thought out.

The author shares a really helpful glimpse at her process in the afterword.

Before I started to write the story, I got a big piece of posterboard and drew the map. I drew all the islands of Earthsea, the Archipelago, the Kargad Lands, the Reaches. And I named them: Havnor, the great island at the middle of the world; Selidor, far out in the west, and the Dragon’s Run, and Hur-at-Hur, and all the rest. But only as I sailed with Ged from Gont did I begin to know the islands, one by one. With him, I first came to Roke, and the Ninety Isles, and Osskil, and farther east even than Astowell. And with him I first went to the dark, dry country, the place across the wall where the dead must go. A voyage long enough, strange enough, great enough for one book.

Creating a scaffolding, but not a deep, rigid bible, she gave herself lines to colour inside as she wrote.

I don’t know if I’ll read more of the Earthsea Cycle, but I enjoyed the time I spent there, and have taken away some concrete ideas of how to spend my time prepping for my next book!