Le Guin, Ursula: The Farthest Shore
The Farthest Shore (1972)
Written by: Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 197 (Mass Market Paperback)
Series: Book Three of Six
This book was read as part of Jawas Read, Too!'s "Summer of Series" reading challenge. To learn more, click here.
The Farthest Shore is the last Le Guin book in Jawa's Summer of Series Challenge, which surprised me initially. But it turns out, when Le Guin first started writing Earthsea, she wrote it as a trilogy. And then some time later, after she "discovered" feminism and looked at her Earthsea world with new eyes and began writing more. Tehanu was supposed to be the "last" book of Earthsea (indeed, the cover I have for it calls it the last!) but she's since written two more books, and to date, the Earthsea series numbers at six titles.
But it's good to look at The Farthest Shore as a final book of a trilogy, given the two books that come before. Thematically, it makes sense.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk--Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord--embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world--even beyond the realm of death--as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.
Review style: This book is difficult to review. Really difficult. I'm going to talk about why it's difficult, why I'm still wrapping my head around it, and how this installment is the most traditional fantasy offering of the Earthsea series so far. I took tons of notes on this book, but don't expect the same analysis of the last two. I just can't wrap my head around it. There will be spoilers though, so for those of you who avoid those like the plague, just skip to the "My Rating" section at the bottom of the review. :)
I started writing this review over last weekend and just couldn't do it. For all the sticky notes and tabs littering this book, I couldn't articulate my thoughts and I just kept rambling without coming to a point. This review, more than usual, will be a reaction more than a review, because frankly, I think it's going to take a second read to really sink my teeth into the meat of this story. A second read or a real-life experience to make me look at this book with fresher eyes.
What makes this so difficult? After all, I've already said it's the most traditional offering so far. It's not to say that the previous books didn't have something traditional to offer (they did), but they both had something pretty darn unique: In A Wizard of Earthsea, we had a wizarding school, which was pretty gosh-darn unique at the time, that and the setting itself wasn't some European knock-off: it was an archipelago and that's pretty gosh-darn attractive. In The Tombs of Atuan, we have a female protagonist (which was pretty rare back in that day) whose heroic quest is less external and more internal and symbolic. She doesn't set out seeking a hidden treasure (that's Ged's job), but in discovering the man who is, she's transformed by her (inner) journey.
But The Farthest Shore has some surprisingly familiar elements: the prophecy of a King (who feels long-lost), comments about the West (note the capital letter), Arren carrying Ged over the mountain, and a few other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. I'm not saying this is bad either: you've got Tolkien clones (Terry Brooks, I'm looking at The Sword of Shannara), and then you have nods and allusions, and this feels like a nod. But what makes this book unique isn't that magic is fading from the land (after all, don't we get that in The Lord of the Rings with the elves leaving to pass Middle Earth into the Age of Men?), but that it's so finite and frightening. When the elves left Middle Earth, it was sad, but they didn't leave behind a world of violence (thanks to Frodo and Sam destroying the Ring). Here, the magic is vanishing: not leaving, vanishing, and people who could work it one minute suddenly can't the next. Dragons lose their ability to speak, becoming nothing but beasts. And the reaction to this is fear and violence and it escalates. We truly see darkness here: slavery and drugs in particular, both of which surprised me by their appearances, but I can't say whether or not this was a unique factor in fantasy at the time. It just surprised me that such things popped their heads up back in the early seventies, even though it's perfectly reasonable to do so.
But the major driving point in this book, aside from trying to find out what's draining the world of magic, is the fear and avoidance of death, and I think it's this factor that makes this book so damn difficult to review. It's not that I haven't experienced death in my life: I lost my grandfather when I was 12 (he might as well have been my father), and since then, I've lost members of my family, my husband's family, and for that matter, I've lost pets, who--don't let anyone tell you otherwise--are members of the family. But yet, this book was difficult and chilling, particularly on page 173: And those who had died for love passed each other in the streets.
I'm sorry but that's just chilling. Whatever your religious orientation or lack thereof, I think there's some comfort with the idea we'll be joyously reunited with our loved ones when we die, and this very sentence just knifes that hope in the heart. Yes, this observation is unique to Earthsea itself, but the threat of it alone is chilling enough, no?
And there were so many other little chilling portions of the book: page 156: All night long the boy slept and the man waked, gazing forward steadily into the dark. There were no stars.
On page 103, when Sopli tries to swear by his own name and Ged tells him he cannot, who doesn't get a serious chill up their spine when Sopli hisses and mutters: I swear by my name. By my name. and winces in pain with each repetition?
Page 47 (hee!): Sleep comes very close to death, everyone knows that. The dead walk in dreams, everyone knows that. This whole passage is excellent and chilling, and Le Guin achieves this with the right word choice and the right cadence to her prose. Haunting, it is, in all of these lines I quote.
I try to step back and look at this book thematically without examining the nature of death too closely. This book, more than anything, is about balance. Ged passionately discusses how life is joyless and not worth living if death didn't exist. By accepting death are we able to live life to its fullest. If we had eternity, would we really enjoy our time, or would we squander it? We see an Earthsea so terrified of death that they'll do anything to stave it off, even if it means giving up the joy of life, the magic of the world. It's heart-breaking, yet Le Guin's message is as true as it is simple: life leads to death, and death leads to life. Classic Le Guin.
But the nature of Earthsea and Ged's spending of his powers to close the door does raise an important question: is magic now gone from the world? Certainly, Ged used up every bit of his strength. He's lucky to be alive (how circular this book is to Wizard, where Ged was the one who opened the door and his Archmage died to save him; where we see what Ged would've become had the shadow made him a gebbeth), and the idea of him living without his powers really isn't heart-breaking, because he sacrificed them for a noble cause. But is magic truly gone from the world? I didn't interpret the ending this way, but I suppose later books will tell. If so, how chilling that in a fantasy series, magic is gone and dried up in the world? The world is becoming something more like the world we know, and what use are dragons if they're nothing more than angry beasts? Still a sight to behold, but still, nothing but beasts and not capable of trickery or friendship or discourse, and that's a shame.
This book is something of a love story and what it means to fall in and out of love (platonic), in and out of faith. Arren experiences all of these things on his journey with Ged, and it's a fascinating thing to behold, because he starts blind love, infatuation, and when he sees Ged for who he really is, a man much like Ogion who has learned that it's best to honor the balance and to listen to the world around him, he becomes angry and frightened. It's only then he journeys into true love, true faith, where he sees his mentor for the man he is and understands him (and understands himself in the process), and can therefore be the hero and king he needs to be by book's ending (come on, who didn't see Arren was the long lost king once the prophecy was mentioned?).
What else can I say? For all it's predictable qualities, it kind of defies a warm fuzzy feeling because of the nature of the story. Whether magic leaves the world or not, the end, while joyous, still leaves the reader a little uncomfortable, and how can we not be uncomfortable. Truly, Le Guin walks her characters through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but they fear no evil. Seeing that oh-so-familiar phrase is just chilling. It's not that we as readers MIGHT being chilled or frightened, so long as the ending lifts us up accordingly. And truly, the ending does lift us up. Only, it's not enough to truly sway that shadow.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: It's close to a "must have," and I wish I had a rating between the two. Because on one hand, it's more traditional than the previous installments and it's also quite predictable (if you don't predict the identity of the Last King or the villain of the piece, you're asleep, because Le Guin all but takes out the neon sign and says, "Here!! Look HERE!!!"), but on the other hand, oh, it's a chilling, bittersweet book. Sure, the ending uplifts, and I love the thematic unity of the books so far and the way this book circles back to A Wizard of Earthsea in so many ways. But the nature of the book and its subject matter, it leaves its mark on you. I suspect I might be able to wrap my arms around this book better upon a second read, and as it stands, I think this is my second favorite of the first three (certainly, it's a fast read and a fascinating one at that). It's a good book, and as always Le Guin's prose can really capture a mood or atmosphere in a way you just can't shake it, even though you can't put your finger on why. There's a lot in this book that I can't put my finger on, and perhaps that's for the best. It's a book that requires some reflection, and that's the reason I didn't rush into this review.
I will say these books can be read out of order, at least, the first three can. You still get more bang for your buck if you read them in order, but these three books are subtitled The Deeds of Ged and Le Guin refers to adventures both known and not to the reader and you never feel like you're missing something key when it comes to understanding the book. In fact, it may be fun to read these three books out of order, as you get hints of what to expect. But I'll always advocate for chronological order when you're able, and like I said, thematically, you get more out of this book if you've read the first two.
And yes, I'll be reading the next group of Earthsea books soon. I've already got Tehanu, and Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind are on order. Look for those reviews later this summer. :)
Cover Commentary: The art on this one really appeals to me. I love the coloring, and while I'm no dragon girl, I do love the image of the dragon spitting fire at the boat. Quite eye-catching, even though I don't care for the background color of the book. Odd, since it kind of resembles the color of my car. :)