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Book Three of the finest fantasy series of all
Date of Review: Dec 22, 2000
The Bottom Line: This is the fulfilling final volume of the greatest fantasy series of all. Suitable for children and adults.
(NOTE: this review is the third of three, covering all the volumes of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. All of them are now posted.)
The Farthest Shore, is the third volume of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. In spirit, it is closer to volume one, A Wizard of Earthsea, than volume two, The Tombs of Atuan, but it has depths that the earlier books only began to address. It is a development and expansion of of the action themes of volume one, and in its treatment of love, the main theme of volume two, it is also an advance. Ged, the main character of A Wizard of Earthsea and one of the two central characters of The Tombs of Atuan, is one of the two main characters of this book. The other is Arren, a young prince, who is about the same age as Ged was at the beginning of volume one. It is not necessary to have read volumes one or two to enjoy this book, but to have done so is to enhance reading pleasure.
(The following paragraph is repeated, verbatim, from my review of A Wizard of Earthsea. Hopefully, when you read it, you'll understand why it's repeated here.)
Let me also say, from the giddy-up, since this is a major theme of my reviews, that most of the characters in these books are Black. That is a conscious political choice by the author, who has a left-wing background (see her magnificent anarchist novel, The Dispossessed, which is probably the finest science fiction novel ever written). This is a needed antidote to the Anglo-Saxon racism that pervades most of this kind of writing. (Did Tolkien have to add an evil Black race to his Ring trilogy?) Given the penchant for good-evil/black-white imagery in Western culture (see Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness & the Literary Imagination for some discussion of this in "classic" American literature), writers cannot naively take this kind of dichotomy for granted.
The Farthest Shore expands the scope of the Earthsea Trilogy and provides it with a fitting and satsfactory conclusion. Once again, we are on the world of Earthsea: a parallel, preindustrial, medieval world where there is magic. Earthsea is a world of islands of various sizes, with no continents. As in A Wizard of Earthsea, the sea is an important setting. Ged, now the greatest wizard of the world, is also its greatest sailor and much of the book takes place at sea.
As The Farthest Shore begins, there is trouble in Earthsea. After Ged has restored the broken ring of Erreth-Akbe (an incident in volume one and the main quest of volume two), sacred kingship should have been restored to the world, but this has not happened. Likewise, there is news from various parts of the world that magic no longer works. Prince Arren has come to Roke, the Isle of the Wise and home of the School of Wizardry (this book was written well before Harry Potter), to bring such a report.
Ged selects Arren as his companion and they leave Roke on Ged's sailboat, Lookfar, searching for the source of the evil. They travel to Hort Town on the island of Wathort, a major trading port. There they discover that it is true that magic no longer "works," that the vigorous commerce of Hort Town is now cheap and sleazy and that large numbers of people are addicted to a strange substance called hazia (which resembles heroin). They meet a wizard who has lost his power and is now an addict. In the man's raving, Ged discovers that not only is he addicted, but he has the illusion that the drug has given him some kind of power to replace the wizardry that he lost. In the darkness of a deserted house, Arren has a vision of a "lord of the shadows" beckoning to him.
After an incident where Arren is captured by slavers and freed by Ged, the two sail to another island, Lorbanery. During the journey, Ged tells Arren of an incident when he engaged in a contest of wizardry with a rogue wizard, Cob, who abused his powers and was calling forth spirits of the dead for amusement! Ged forced Cob to go with him on a spirit journey to the land of the dead as punishment, but he regrets that he did this because it was out of a sense of pride and vengeance. He remarks that he never saw a man who feared death as much as Cob, who played with it.
On Lorbanery, a source of silk and silk cloth, they find much the same as on Wathort. They leave the island taking with them a madman, a former dyer of cloth, named Sopli. Ged hopes that Sopli will guide them to the source of the curse that is rapidly spreading over all of Earthsea. In fear, though, Sopli jumps from Lookfar and is drowned.
(NO MORE FOR YOU! IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND HOW THE EARTHSEA TRILOGY ENDS, YOU'ILL HAVE TO READ THE BOOK. WHO ARE THE "CHILDREN OF THE OPEN SEA"? WHAT DOES THE DRAGON, ORM EMBAR, TELL GED? WHAT IS HAPPENING ON ROKE WITH THE ARCHMAGE GONE? WHO IS THE LORD OF THE SHADOWS? WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DRY LAND? AND, FINALLY, WHO IS THE NEW KING OF ALL THE ISLES? IF YOU HAVEN'T GUESSED THAT YET, GO BACK TO PAGE 1.)
The Farthest Shore is, like The Tombs of Atuan, suitable for children, twelve and up. Younger kids will find it too complex a story. The main characters here are male, and I think that girls might find this book a little outside their interest. I could be wrong. Adults, of course, will love the whole series.
Ursula LeGuin, the daughter of pioneering anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and author Theodora Kroeber (Ishi in Two Worlds), is a great builder of worlds. She is a writer of love, courage, compassion, freedom. Although The Farthest Shore, with its ancient kingships and feudal structure, is not the kind of world we might prefer (magic or not), it is a world of fully-rounded people involved in life. LeGuin is a great, healthy writer. (There are great sick wrIters like, say Franz Kafka.) As mentioned above, LeGuin has also writtenThe Dispossessed, the finest science fiction novel ever written. She has also crafted the beautiful The Left Hand of Darkness.
(A word about Tehanu, a continuation of the Earthsea Trilogy, written several years after the series was completed. While it is a worthwhile book, continuing the stories of Ged, Tenar (from The Tombs of Atuan) and Arren, I believe it is a falling off as a novel. It should be read, but it is something of a disappointment to readers of the main volumes.)
