One down...

"As they came right together it became utterly black in the white mage-radiance... In silence, man and shadow met face to face, and stopped."


Finished A Wizard of Earthsea today! That's one down... forty-nine to go. :D Closing thoughts on the book...

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A Wizard of Earthsea is a genre novel to the core, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, I suppose. For fans of high fantasy, it's another good addition to the reader's list, with an impetuous young man's coming-of-age, a richly detailed world, a hero's journey... oh yeah, and dragons. Dragons are important.

The bad thing: if I were looking for the negative, I would say it has to be a simplistic plot and somewhat one-dimensional characters. No surprises here, but I am a fan of the genre, and I was ready for something straightforward. :)

Ms. Le Guin's elegant storytelling makes up for it, anyway. Her prose style has the whole epic feeling, without going overly detailed. Dialogue is sparse, but to the point... it reads like a fable or an old legend; I can somehow picture a bard of Earthsea telling the tale of Ged and the Shadow to a wide-eyed circle of people by firelight. (overactive imagination I have... ha. :))

Earthsea is a world that is fantastic, yet somehow believable. It also has its share of powerful and memorable moments (particularly the "loosing of the shadow" and the climax) that remind me why I like to get lost in a good fantasy in the first place.

I've added the remainder of The Earthsea Cycle to my reading list; though I don't plan on tracking them down immediately, I will make a point to get to them in time.

***

Now, on to other things... I pulled A Grief Observed out of my C. S. Lewis boxset for the next in line. It's very short, and I've recently read good things about it in an online reader's community I've been lurking at. Besides, it's been a while since I picked up one of Jack's books (perhaps my favorite author ever).

Though I also discovered that Shivering World is sitting there with an envelope marking where I left off back in August... and I have an itch to re-read The Last Unicorn... but... one thing at a time, so I don't get overwhelmed! :)