I must have completely missed the boat on this one. I really didn’t like the Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin at all. I felt there were a lot of unnecessary details, and I kept having to backtrack to figure out what I just read. I put the book down at 100 pages and started again about a month later when I had more patience to read it. It was ok, and although I am grateful that it ended in an unexpected way, the ending was still rather dull. The story just sort of faded out, and I won’t be reading the next in the series.

The story follows a young man who becomes the apprentice of a wizard. The wizard names him Sparrowhawk, and his education begins. Sparrowhawk doesn’t appreciate this first wizard mentor and leaves to study at an esteemed wizard school. There, out of pride, he uses a powerful spell and conjures a shadow from the otherside. The evil shadow follows him everywhere and could be Sparrowhawk’s undoing and possibly the world’s too. In the meantime he comes across several magical beings, including a dragon and beautiful witch.

Will he ever find and defeat the shadow? Will he make things right again? I never really sympathized with his selfish character and therefore couldnt get into the internal struggle he had. The one thing I did appreciate was that he seemed to have lost his pride after releasing the spirit, but then he just seemed like a bland uninteresting character to me.

All in all, the confusing language and tricky sentences just didn’t work for me. This book has a lot of loyal fans, but unfortunately I can’t add my name to that list.

Kate

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) by Ursula Le Guin
(c) 1968, Houghton Mifflin
Publisher Reading Level: Young Adult
ISBN: 0-395-27653-5
204 Pages