The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
"What is evil?"
"A web we men weave."
For the past three days, I've been reading myself to sleep with an installment from the Earthsea Cycle (#perksofbuyingcompilations).
"Just a few pages" becomes chapters and before I know it, it's waaaaay past my bedtime and I've finished the whole thing!
Such is the quality of these books. However, compared to Books 1 and 2, I have to say that Book 3 seemed the most... tropey. It's a familiar story: there is a great evil abroad, and our hero from Books 1 and 2 (Sparrowhawk is fast becoming a real person to me!!), now the archmage of Earthsea, must leave his ivory tower and do battle with only an innocent teenaged prince, Arren, as his companion.
That being said, Le Guin's prose elevates it to another plane. Just look at this gem of a paragraph:
"Arren saw the dragons soaring and circling on the morning wind, and his heart leapt up with them with a joy, a joy of fulfillment, that was like pain. All the glory of mortality was in that flight. Their beauty was made up of terrible strength, utter wildness, and the grace of reason. For these were thinking creatures, with speech and ancient wisdom: in the patterns of their flight there was a fierce, willed concord."
ALL THE GLORY OF THAT WRITING. Reading it, one feels... ennobled!
Was quite shocked to read about slavery and drug use in its pages, keeping in mind that Le Guin wrote this for young adults in 1972. In the afterword, she says that she did this deliberately bcause she saw evil "as an insidious and ever-present enemy in my own daily life in my own country: the ruinous irresponsibility of greed."
But it is never all doom and gloom with Le Guin, which is why we love her.
Her heroes are pushed to the very brink of death, and sometimes past, but they persist. "Though you choose despair, remember we have not yet done so."
Hurray for the weekend... which means... guilt-free reading time! Onwards to Book 4!
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