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A Wizard Of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, 1)

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A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) Paperback – September 28, 2004

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)

4.3 12,402 ratings

Book 1 of 6: The Earthsea Cycle

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Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

From the Paperback edition.

Reading age

10+ years, from customers
Book 1 of 6

The Earthsea Cycle
Print length

192 pages
Language

English
Dimensions

5.21 x 0.42 x 8.21 inches
Publisher

Spectra
Publication date

September 28, 2004
ISBN-10

0553383043
ISBN-13

978-0553383041
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But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.
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Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
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“Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”
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Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

From the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was born in 1929; her parents were the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. She writes both poetry and prose, including realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, young children's books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, verbal texts for musicians, and voicetexts for performance or recording. She has published five books of poetry, seventeen novels, over a hundred short stories (collected in eight volumes), two collections of essays, eleven books for children, and two volumes of translation. Several of Le Guin's major titles have remained continuously in print for over thirty years. Her best known fantasy works, the first four Books of Earthsea, have sold millions of copies in America and England, and have been translated into sixteen languages. Three of Le Guin's books have been finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and among the many honors her writing has received are the National Book Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula awards, the Kafka award, a Pushcart Prize, the Howard Vursell award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Award.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WARRIORS IN THE MIST

The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. From the towns in its high valleys and the ports on its dark narrow bays many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard or mage, or, looking for adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle of all Earthsea. Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage. His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.

He was born in a lonely village called Ten Alders, high on the mountain at the head of the Northward Vale. Below the village the pastures and plow lands of the Vale slope downward level below level towards the sea, and other towns lie on the bends of the River Ar; above the village only forest rises ridge behind ridge to the stone and snow of the heights.

The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given him by his mother, and that and his life were all she could give him, for she died before he was a year old. His father, the bronze-smith of the village, was a grim unspeaking man, and since Duny's six brothers were older than he by many years and went one by one from home to farm the land or sail the sea or work as smith in other towns of the Northward Vale, there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall, quick boy, loud and proud and full of temper. With the few other children of the village he herded goats on the steep meadows above the river-springs; and when he was strong enough to push and pull the long bellows-sleeves, his father made him work as smith's boy, at a high cost in blows and whippings. There was not much work to be got out of Duny. He was always off and away; roaming deep in the forest, swimming in the pools of the River Ar that like all Gontish rivers runs very quick and cold, or climbing by cliff and scarp to the heights above the forest, from which he could see the sea, that broad northern ocean where, past Perregal, no islands are.

A sister of his dead mother lived in the village. She had done what was needful for him as a baby, but she had business of her own and once he could look after himself at all she paid no more heed to him. But one day when the boy was seven years old, untaught and knowing nothing of the arts and powers that are in the world, he heard his aunt crying out words to a goat which had jumped up onto the thatch of a hut and would not come down: but it came jumping when she cried a certain rhyme to it. Next day herding the longhaired goats on the meadows of High Fall, Duny shouted to them the words he had heard, not knowing their use or meaning or what kind of words they were:

Noth hierth malk man

hiolk han merth han!

He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. They came very quickly, all of them together, not making any sound. They looked at him out of the dark slot in their yellow eyes.

Duny laughed and shouted it out again, the rhyme that gave him power over the goats. They came closer, crowding and pushing round him. All at once he felt afraid of their thick, ridged horns and their strange eyes and their strange silence. He tried to get free of them and to run away. The goats ran with him keeping in a knot around him, and so they came charging down into the village at last, all the goats going huddled together as if a rope were pulled tight round them, and the boy in the midst of them weeping and bellowing. Villagers ran from their houses to swear at the goats and laugh at the boy. Among them came the boy's aunt, who did not laugh. She said a word to the goats, and the beasts began to bleat and browse and wander, freed from the spell.

"Come with me," she said to Duny.

She took him into her hut where she lived alone. She let no child enter there usually, and the children feared the place. It was low and dusky, windowless, fragrant with herbs that hung drying from the crosspole of the roof, mint and moly and thyme, yarrow and rushwash and paramal, kingsfoil, clovenfoot, tansy and bay. There his aunt sat crosslegged by the firepit, and looking sidelong at the boy through the tangles of her black hair she asked him what he had said to the goats, and if he knew what the rhyme was. When she found that he knew nothing, and yet had spellbound the goats to come to him and follow him, then she saw that he must have in him the makings of power.

As her sister's son he had been nothing to her, but now she looked at him with a new eye. She praised him, and told him she might teach him rhymes he would like better, such as the word that makes a snail look out of its shell, or the name that calls a falcon down from the sky.

"Aye, teach me that name!" he said, being clear over the fright the goats had given him, and puffed up with her praise of his cleverness.

The witch said to him, "You will not ever tell that word to the other children, if I teach it to you."

"I promise."

She smiled at his ready ignorance. "Well and good. But I will bind your promise. Your tongue will be stilled until I choose to unbind it, and even then, though you can speak, you will not be able to speak the word I teach you where another person can hear it. We must keep the secrets of our craft."

"Good," said the boy, for he had no wish to tell the secret to his playmates, liking to know and do what they knew not and could not.

He sat still while his aunt bound back her uncombed hair, and knotted the belt of her dress, and again sat cross-legged throwing handfuls of leaves into the firepit, so that a smoke spread and filled the darkness of the hut. She began to sing. Her voice changed sometimes to low or high as if another voice sang through her, and the singing went on and on until the boy did not know if he waked or slept, and all the while the witch's old black dog that never barked sat by him with eyes red from the smoke. Then the witch spoke to Duny in a tongue he did not understand, and made him say with her certain rhymes and words until the enchantment came on him and held him still.

"Speak!" she said to test the spell.

The boy could not speak, but he laughed.

Then his aunt was a little afraid of his strength, for this was as strong a spell as she knew how to weave: she had tried not only to gain control of his speech and silence, but to bind him at the same time to her service in the craft of sorcery. Yet even as the spell bound him, he had laughed. She said nothing. She threw clear water on the fire till the smoke cleared away, and gave the boy water to drink, and when the air was clear and he could speak again she taught him the true name of the falcon, to which the falcon must come.

This was Duny's first step on the way he was to follow all his life, the way of magery, the way that led him at last to hunt a shadow over land and sea to the lightless coasts of death's kingdom. But in those first steps along the way, it seemed a broad, bright road.

When he found that the wild falcons stooped down to him from the wind when he summoned them by name, lighting with a thunder of wings on his wrist like the hunting-birds of a prince, then he hungered to know more such names and came to his aunt begging to learn the name of the sparrowhawk and the osprey and the eagle. To earn the words of power he did all the witch asked of him and learned of her all she taught, though not all of it was pleasant to do or know. There is a saying on Gont, Weak as woman's magic, and there is another saying, Wicked as woman's magic. Now the witch of Ten Alders was no black sorceress, nor did she ever meddle with the high arts or traffic with Old Powers; but being an ignorant woman among ignorant folk, she often used her crafts to foolish and dubious ends. She knew nothing of the Balance and the Pattern which the true wizard knows and serves, and which keep him from using his spells unless real need demands. She had a spell for every circumstance, and was forever weaving charms. Much of her lore was mere rubbish and humbug, nor did she know the true spells from the false. She knew many curses, and was better at causing sickness, perhaps, than at curing it. Like any village witch she could brew up a love-potion, but there were other, uglier brews she made to serve men's jealousy and hate. Such practices, however, she kept from her young prentice, and as far as she was able she taught him honest craft.

At first all his pleasure in the art-magic was, childlike, the power it gave him over bird and beast, and the knowledge of these. And indeed that pleasure stayed with him all his life. Seeing him in the high pastures often with a bird of prey about him, the other children called him Sparrowhawk, and so he came by the name that he kept in later life as his use-name, when his true-name was not known.

As the witch kept talking of the glory and the riches and the great power over men that a sorcerer could gain, he set himself to learn more useful lore. He was very quick at it. The witch praised him and the children of the village began to fear him, and he himself was sure that very soon he would become great among men. So he went on from word to word and from spell to spell with the witch till he was twelve years old and had learned from her a great part of what she knew: not much, but enough for the witchwife of a small village, and more than enough for a boy of twelve. She had taught him all her lore in herbals and healing, and all she knew of the crafts of finding, binding, mending, unsealing and revealing. What she knew of chanters' tales and the great Deeds she had sung him, and all the words of the True Speech that she had learned from the sorcerer that taught her, she taught again to Duny. And from weatherworkers and wandering jugglers who went from town to town of the Northward...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Spectra; Reprint edition (September 28, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553383043
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553383041
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 10+ years, from customers
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.21 x 0.42 x 8.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,099 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy (Books)

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Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (US /ˈɜːrsələ ˈkroʊbər ləˈɡwɪn/; born October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography.

She influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell – and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin has resided in Portland, Oregon since 1959.

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PlantBirdWoman

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin: A review

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2016

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How is it that I have been a constant reader all these mumble, mumble years and I've never read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's work? It defies comprehension. How many other wonderful writers have I overlooked along the way?

I was reminded of Le Guin recently when I was reading an article about influential women writers and her name was on the list of ten presented by the author. It seemed like a kick in the pants that I needed to stick one of her books into my reading queue and finally make her acquaintance. I decided to start with the Earthsea Cycle, her series of fantasy adventures. A Wizard of Earthsea was the first in the series.

Earthsea is Le Guin's equivalent of Middle Earth or the Seven Kingdoms - a fantastical world where sorcerers, wizards, witches, and dragons hold sway. A Wizard of Earthsea introduces us to young Sparrowhawk, a child who early on shows that he possesses the powers of a wizard. He is sent to apprentice with a master called Ogion, and his true name, Ged, is revealed. But at a certain point, the impatient Ged comes to feel that Ogion is holding him back. He's teaching him foundational stuff but what the youth wants is to learn "real magic."

Ogion offers Ged the opportunity to go to a place called Roke where there is something like an academy of wizardry that has an advanced course of learning. There, Ged makes a friend, Vetch, but he also makes an enemy, Jasper. He and Jasper are consumed by jealousy of each other and they engage in schoolboy dares, each trying to best his opponent.

In response to one of Jasper's dares, Ged summons the spirit of a long dead woman, but when the spirit comes, there also comes a shadow that is loosed on the world. That shadow becomes Ged's nemesis. It hunts him to annihilate him. The rest of the story tells of Ged's quest to master the shadow and destroy it before it destroys him. As he becomes the hunter rather than the hunted, he is joined by his friend, Vetch.

Ged is a flawed character, a stereotypical cocky adolescent who thinks he knows it all. Even though he is a wizard of formidable talent, he screws up time and again and must spend much of his time trying to rectify his mistakes. He seems, in other words, altogether human.

The story reminds the reader of many others that concern the hero's journey. Most obviously, perhaps, is The Lord of the Rings with the perilous journey of Frodo and Sam. But it also has clear connections to the Arthurian legends and the struggles of the Knights of the Round Table against evil in the world. This is a much slimmer volume than those tales and much of it is taken up with exposition of Ged's childhood and adolescence, background material for the rest of the series.

It's interesting that there are no armies, no wars here and not much bloodshed - unless you count the blood of the six dragons that Ged kills. In an afterword to the Kindle edition which I read, the author makes the point that this was deliberate. She set out to write a fantasy featuring the struggle between good and evil that was not drenched in blood. In her telling of that struggle, the key turns out to be to know yourself and to remain true to that self. Another important key is to know the true name of the evil you are wrestling. To know a thing's true name is to know its nature and to be able to gain power over it.

Also, in the afterword, Le Guin makes a point that her heroes in the story are people of color, a refreshing change from most contemporary fantasies or sci-fi of the time this book was published in which the heroes are almost always white guys. Even though she didn't make a big point of the characters' color in telling the story, this was her subtle bit of subversion back in 1968.

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Tory Anderson

Magic With Consequences

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2016

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Earthsea’s approach to magic deeply intrigued me. Like most human beings I find the idea of magic fascinating. To be able to wave my hand or a wand, say a word, and have what I want to happen is a very seductive daydream. However, I find that it usually accompanied by a bitter aftertaste. The bitterness stems from where magic meets reality. Rarely are there any solid attempts (or any attempts at all) to explain how magic works, what rules there are to using it, and the consequences of using it. While I can read books that involve magic, and enjoy them, I have a greater appreciation for those books where the author treats the magic as more than mere entertainment for the reader. Usula Le Guin does a remarkable job in A Wizard of Earthsea: Book 1.

Instead of giving in to the readers’ magical fantasies by having her hero use fantastic powers in battle for the purposes of shock and awe, she moves the opposite direction. We see little magic from Ged throughout the book even though one powerful wizard has foreseen that Ged will become the most powerful among them. Unlike Harry Potter where magic is used at every turn for the delight of the reader, Le Guin shows magic sparingly even though her world is full of it. For me that is a refreshing twist.
Ironically Ged, when he learns he has a propensity for magic, dreams like any of us would of all the things he will do with his magic when he learns how to use it. The day comes when a wizard takes him on as an apprentice. Ogion subtly showed great power by easily bringing Ged back from a near-death state that had been brought on by Ged’s overextending what little power he then had to save his village from attackers.

Ged is soon disappointed by this Ogion’s hesitancy to use magic. He won’t even use it to stop the rain so that they can sleep dry while traveling through the forest.

But Ogion let the rain fall where it would. He found a thick fir-tree and lay
down beneath it. Ged crouched among the dripping bushes wet and sullen,
and wondered what was the good of having power if you were too wise to use
it, and wished he had gone as prentice to that old weatherworker of the Vale,
where at least he would have slept dry.

I was impressed by Le Guin’s responsible approach toward magic. I was happy at how she carried out this restraint throughout the book, successfully using the restraint to keep my attention and not boring me.

Ged is unhappy with his tutelage by Ogion as it seems nothing more than learning how to live with nature. He doesn’t understand, or perhaps he just doesn’t have enough patience, to accept that this oneness with nature is the source of Ogion’s great power. Even after seeing a terrifying display of Ogion’s power, once more to save Ged’s life:

The door was flung wide. A man entered with a white light flaming about him, a
great bright figure who spoke aloud, fiercely and suddenly. The darkness and the whispering ceased and were dispelled.

Ged jumps at the chance to leave his apprenticeship under Ogion and go to the great wizarding school on the island of Roke.

But even on Roke, where Ged excels in his studies, the wizards, masters of magic, teach restraint in using it. I found I bought in wholeheartedly to Le Guin’s magical philosophy taught through these wizards.

To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son,
even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world . . . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

Yes! A world of magic that has teeth. Using magic in this world has consequences.

Ged progresses in magic faster than he is emotionally mature and this, of course, leads to the conflict. Through pride and carelessness he calls something into the world that has no name and thus cannot be controlled by any wizard, let alone the young Ged. The rest of the book is about Ged surviving while learning how to face this dark power he has unleashed.

Ged, a young wizard who gets little respect and who is struggling for his life still lives as a hero. While confronting a dragon, and very possibly death, Ged is given a great temptation. The dragon, in a bid to save itself has a proposition:

“Yet I could help you. You will need help soon, against that which hunts you in the dark.”

Ged stood dumb.

“What is it that hunts you? Name it to me. . . . If you could name it you could master it, maybe, little wizard.
Maybe I could tell you its name, when I see it close by. And it will come close, if you wait about my isle.”

If Ged makes the deal he may save himself, but at the cost of the village who has hired him to save them.

Le Guin’s book reads like most novels you’ve read, but in tone it feels like a story being told around a campfire.

"So bolstering up his pride, he set all his strong will n the work they gave him, the lessons and crafts and histories and skills taught by the grey-cloaked masters of Roke, who were called the Nine."

The world she creates has great detail while at the same time displaying a sparseness that a story of the oral tradition might have. This bothered me a little, falling short of the Tolkien complexity of details, and yet intrigued me as a legitimate, polished style she consciously chose.

If you are a serious fan of fantasy, but haven’t read A Wizard of Earthsea, you ought to. You may not like Le Guin’s style as opposed to how writers are writing today, but it is serious book, very readable, that will give good contrast to the other books of magic you may come across and make your reading experiences more pleasurable. Jacob and Lace

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B&B

Great book

Reviewed in Canada on January 25, 2024

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Great book

Julia Car

Great Fantasy book

Reviewed in Germany on January 27, 2024

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Amazing!

J. Millman

Excellent fantasy for adults and older kids

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2023

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I started this age 8 (and saw a stage play of it) but I doubt I finished it and I think it would have been ‘too old’ for me; it’s not ‘adult’ in the sexual sense but the writing style is a bit too ‘literary’ for kids. Coming to it now after nearly four decades I found it excellent - beautiful writing and great world-building, and the bits with the Shadow were pretty shuddery. I can get that some people wouldn’t like it though; it’s not that big on action or character development, although it does have some of both those things. I’m looking forward to starting the second book.

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Cliente Amazon

If you like fantasy, this series is a must!

Reviewed in Italy on May 15, 2023

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This book was written in the 60's. It's easy to see where the inspiration for successive fantasy worlds originated. Ursula's characters are incredibly human and we see them making mistakes and learning. The fantasy world draws you in, I read the whole series in a week of binge reading, couldn't put them down!

José L.

Gran libro! Hermosa lectura

Reviewed in Mexico on January 6, 2021

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Hermoso libro, fue mi primer libro en inglés, ya que es más económico leer en inglés en mi país. Está súper bien narrado, Úrsula es una excelente escritora que transmite ideas y emociones increíbles. El libro en sí, es auntoconclusivo, aunque las historias de Ged y Terramar se extienden en más tomos. Lo que puedo decir es que este es, probablemente, mi libro favorito hasta ahora, una lectura relajante, comprensiva y hermosa.

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