Name: A Wizard of Earthsea
Rating: 3.888661202185792 (366 reviews)
ISBN: 9780553383041

Ursula K. Le Guin

A boy grows to manhood while attempting to subdue the evil he unleashed on the world as an apprentice to the Master Wizard.

A Wizard of Earthsea

In print for more than three decades and translated into dozens of languages, here is the audio release of the first book in The Earthsea Trilogy. This is a tale of wizards, dragons, and shadows, played in an archipelago of imagined islands. The young boy Sparrowhawk becomes apprentice to a Master Wizard; but impatience to learn faster takes him far from home to Roke Island, where he enters the School for Wizards. As a student of magic, Sparrowhawk exceeds his years in accomplishment, but pride and jealousy drive the boy to try certain dangerous powers too soon. A terrible evil is let loose in the land.

Karpe Diez

Well-written but still just a classic story of same-old wizards, mages, witches and their adventures. Not getting even close to the depth of previously read books by same author - but my 3 star rating could be biased because only after I finished it I realized it's a teenage book. Fun and entertaining (light) reading when things become too much...

Originally published in 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea marks the first of the six now beloved Earthsea titles. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous 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. This ebook includes a sample chapter of THE TOMBS OF ATUAN.

Marija

Great story and magic system, but story was short (I know there is sequal :P) and not detailed enough...

Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk 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.

The First Book of Earthsea

A. D. Knapp

Very short, but well written and accomplishes a lot in 183 pages.

Very simple. And honest. I loved reading it.

Terra Ganey

Having thoroughly enjoyed Ursula K. Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest, I eagerly dove into this one with high expectations. However, despite my best efforts, I couldn't quite connect with it. The protagonist, Ged, is a gifted child with the potential for wizardry. His journey into the world of sorcery begins when he captures the attention of a witch. Initially, everything seemed thrilling and effortless for him, but little did he know that a challenging and thorny path lay silently ahead, waiting to unfold.

Bilge Ince

This book didn't quite resonate with me!

Having thoroughly enjoyed Ursula K. Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest, I eagerly dove into this one with high expectations. However, despite my best efforts, I couldn't quite connect with it. The protagonist, Ged, is a gifted child with the potential for wizardry. His journey into the world of sorcery begins when he captures the attention of a witch. Initially, everything seemed thrilling and effortless for him, but little did he know that a challenging and thorny path lay silently ahead, waiting to unfold.

YA means adults who may have forgotten the joy of reading 

levipack

Winona 

A Wizard of Earthsea is so different from any other kind of fantasy book that I have read before, that it took me a while to mull it over before I decided to finally write a review about it. 

A bit of background before I get into the meat of this review, though. I read this book the middle of exam season: university life has made it very difficult for me to read for pleasure as my head is always buried in the works of Machiavelli, Aristotle, Marx, and Fanon for exams and assignments (weeps at the current status of my reading challenge). I picked up  A Wizard of Earthsea  because I had enjoyed Le Guin's other book,  The Left Hand of Darkness , and had seen the Ghibli adaptation of the entire Earthsea series a few years ago (don't watch it, it sucks), but mostly because the book is actually quite short. Especially for a fantasy book (and I needed a light read).

I was initially apprehensive about reading a fantasy book that was as short as this. I think my copy of the book is only about 160 pages long: I heard the praise around the book, but being so used to reading long, heavily plot-driven, fantasy books I was a bit puzzled as to how Le Guin would be able to convey Ged's coming-of-age journey with enough power and depth.

Oh boy, I was so wrong to make assumptions about this story on the basis of its genre.  A Wizard of Earthsea  is completely unlike any other book I have read in the fantasy genre before. There are no battles of epic proportions, no hard binaries between good and evil, no Messianic prophesies, and definitely no heroes that are blessed from the beginning and suffer no consequences because of their actions. I've gotten too used to reading stories where our protagonist is a prodigy of magic, and the bad things that happen in the story are due to some higher evil -- the bad things are happening to the protagonist, not because of the protagonist's own actions.

In A Wizard of Earthsea, we are taken through the journey of Ged's / Sparrowhawk's development from a child to a man. We are introduced to Ged as a young boy, on the island of Gont, with a keen knack for magic - the boy is essentially a prodigy of the magical kind. Not satisfied with the teachings of the Wizard he has been apprenticed to, Ged is sent to the magic school on the Island of Roke. 

Now, this is where  A Wizard of Earthsea  starts to differ quite drastically from other conventional fantasy novels that I have read previously whereby the hero is sent to some kind of magical school / camp, and we follow him through the routine, customs, and lessons of said school / camp before he's entrusted with some kind of special mission because he's such an amazing prodigy that the Headmaster let's him do some of the most dangerous things. You get the gist. Well, this doesn't happen here. We don't actually get much detail about Ged's school life in the conventional sense. What Le Guin does give us are valuable lessons from Ged's teachers: lessons that we see a young, intelligent, but  arrogant  Ged ignores in his pursuit for more knowledge about magic, equilibrium, and names, as well as for greater recognition of his immense talents (much to his own detriment).

What I love most about  A Wizard of Earthsea  is that Ged is both the villain and hero of the story. It is Ged's childish hot-headednesses and myopic arrogance that leads him to put not only his own life at risk, but potentially the lives of the entire population of Earthsea. We see Ged go from being a brash and arrogant boy, to a timid and recluse teenager afraid of his own power and abilities, to finally becoming a man who has literally chased his demon across the entire world in order to become a full man having learnt that it is the darkness within us that we should seek to come to terms with. 

It's such a beautiful coming-of-age story. One that weaves magic into a study of humanity, compassion, and guilt.

Erik Wallace

Found this book on a best of books gift list. Can't put my finger on what I didn't love about it, but I just didn't

Cannot wait to read the rest of this series. A classic fantasy novel that reads and feels like an epic poem or a transcribed storyteller. Ursula K Le Guin had such a kind touch to her work, honestly. 

Jacque

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.

rumbledethumps

I read this book as a kid and loved it. I think I love it even more after having read it again as an adult.

It was originally written as YA novel, and I can understand how. It has all those elements (finding your power, discovering your true self, etc), but what I enjoyed the most about it was LeGuin's writing and storytelling. She tells the story like a classic myth or legend, with just enough detail to immerse the reader in Earthsea. She hints at ancient stories, names lands that Ged passes, and talks of faraway peoples, all of which accumulate into a well-formed world. 

Perhaps the best example of her sparse descriptions that carry so much weight comes in the last chapter: "[They] seemed not to recognize the young wizards' staffs for what they were, admiring them only for the precious stuff they were made of, wood." This sentence says so much about the village, the villagers, and the island they inhabit, without having to go into any more detail. 

The whole book is a master-class in economical world-building. She has created a more realized world in under 200 pages than many authors do in over 1000 pages.

Ira Cummings

Jeff James

I remember reading this book years and years ago and disliking it for whatever reason, even though Evan loved it and read the whole series. I wanted to give it another chance now because I was pretty sure I didn't give it a fair shake at the time, and I've been in the mood for period fantasy lately. Luckily, this was an excellent read, and I look forward to the next book in the series. Now I just need to re-read The Great Gatsby to undo the work of junior English class...

Ryan LaFerney

A Wizard of Earthsea is perhaps one of the most important works of fantasy in the latter half of the twentieth century. So many authors and artists, from J.K. Rowling, Nnedi Okorafor, to Hayao Miyazaki have been influenced by Le Guin's Earthsea cycle. It could also be credited as one of the first works of young adult fantasy (although I'd argue it is a ageless tale). And although frequently compared with Tolkien's Middle Earth or C.S. Lewis' Narnia, this magnificent work of fantasy remains wholly unique and enthralling and quite original yet it still seems to fly under the radar for general readers. Le Guin sadly has not received the same status as Lewis or Tolkien.

Influenced by Norse and Native American mythology as well as Taoist thought (the idea of cosmic balance), Le Guin's depiction of Earthsea is just as rich in ideas as Tolkien's Middle Earth. She was able to create entire preindustrial cultures for the islands of Earthsea (such as the white-skinned Kargish people, and darkskinned Hardic peoples) .Earthsea itself is an archipelago or group of islands. In the fictional history of this world, the islands were raised from the ocean by Segoy, an ancient deity or hero. The world is inhabited by both humans and dragons, and several among the humans are sorcerers or wizards, including our hero in the Wizard of Earthsea, Ged.

Ged is the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea. When we meet him he is reckless yet talented youth named Duny (or "Sparrowhawk"), who is gifted with the power of magic. When his village is attacked by Kargish raiders, Duny summons a fog to conceal the village and its inhabitants, enabling the residents to drive off the Kargs. Hearing of this, the powerful mage Ogion takes him as an apprentice, giving him his "true name"—Ged. Ogion tries to teach Ged about the "equilibrium", the concept that magic can upset the natural order of the world if used improperly. In an attempt to impress a girl, however, Ged searches Ogion's spell books and inadvertently summons a strange shadow, which has to be banished by Ogion. Sensing Ged's eagerness to act and impatience with his slow teaching methods, Ogion sends him to the renowned school for wizards on the island of Roke where Ged, in his proud nature, will casts a powerful spell intended to raise the spirit of a legendary dead woman, but the spell goes awry and instead releases a shadow creature, which attacks him and scars his face. He soon discovers that the shadow creature he released is haunting him and is destroying the world. 

The rest of the novel is focused on Ged's journey. It is focused on how he becomes a powerful and humble mage and how he journeyed to death's threshold in order to restore the balance within earthsea and to atone for his arrogant ways. Ged is a "superb creation", and in many ways is a more relatable wizard than those featured in prominent works of fantasy at the time. I mean, as much as I love Gandalf, he does really have a huge story arc in the LOTR. He is sort of fulfills a merlin archetype.

 A Wizard of Earthsea is about many things but ultimately I think it a coming of age tale. Ged transforms from a reckless youth into a responsible mage in less than two hundred pages.It is the story of Ged's testing and his restoration. It is also about the nature of evil (the misunderstanding of the balance of life), the nature of healing (to truly heal one has to endure much testing whether it be physical or emotional or both and suffer the way Ged does) and the power of words (spells can be harmful and release demonic shadows after all or they can restore and bring order to the universe). In short, words have power and Le Guin knew this.

A Wizard of Earthsea is a beautiful story—poetic, thrilling, and profound and one of the best fantasy novels ever written. Please pick it up.

The first book of Earthsea is a tale of wizards, dragons and terrifying shadows. The island of Gont is a land famous for wizards. Of these, some say the greatest - and surely the greatest voyager - is the man called Sparrowhawk. As a reckless, awkward boy, he discovered the great power that was in him - with terrifying consequences. Tempted by pride to try spells beyond his means, Sparrowhawk lets loose an evil shadow-beast in his land. Only he can destroy it, and the quest leads him to the farthest corner of Earthsea.

Briar Rose

*Review also posted at Briar Rose Reads

I cannot believe it took me this long to finally read this book. (I feel like I'm at risk of losing my credibility as a lifelong YA fantasy fan!) But now that I have read it, I definitely understand the hype.

A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA is the coming-of-age story. It is quiet and lush and intelligent. It is full of wonder, but does not flinch from the horrible.

Gifted with incredible magic, young Ged makes a mistake--a proud, thoughtless mistake, a child's mistake--which is magnified because of his power. He spends much of the rest of the book seeking to atone, and to track down the terrible, nameless thing unleashed by his actions.

The world-building is exquisite. Ged's journey, his search for atonement always interwoven with his discovery of the shape and nature and name of things, is deeply compelling.

I will confess to some surprise at the lack of female characters--the only one I recall being positively portrayed was a fourteen-year-old who seemed to know her place, who dutifully took care of her household--but I have hope that will be remedied in later books.

If, like me, you have managed to miss this classic, I advise giving it a read as soon as possible.

A Wizard of Earthsea

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