The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K Le Guin - The Origin of Modern Fantasy
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- I'm on a mission to help you find your new favourite books.
This is an introduction to Earthsea, the Origin of Modern Fantasy. This series has had a huge influence on all fantasy that has come after. It's had a bigger influence than Lord of the Rings. ;)
This is a spoiler-free deep dive into all six books. I'll look at the major plotlines of Earthsea, the history of it's writing, and outline why the 'Coming of Age' story type has become a staple of modern fantasy.
Subscribe to see more videos about big book series! To support our channel, please check out our shop! rainbowspaceun...
I read the first three to both my kids as a JKR corrective. they’re just-better by miles. For a start, magic takes energy and has consequences.
I love this so much!!!
I don't know what JKR means so your point was completely lost on me.
@@richardrose2606 It stands for JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.
I agree with everything you say. "A Wizard Of Earthsea" is - still - the best story of a boy going to a wizard school. 🙂
If I remember correctly there was mention of "witch marriages" between two women. I always read that as being a nod to queer representation existing on the fringes of Earthsea. Still not much.
The later books had attempts to overcome the sexism of the first three books- "weak as women's magic", "wicked as women's magic", the wizard school at Roke only admitting boys etc.
Great video! And totally agree about the children’s books can be so awesome and worth your time! I remember way back when the Harry Potter books were very much the rage, they came in more adult looking editions because (some) adults didn’t want to be seen reading a children’s book 😅. Anyways looking forward to the next one and sci-fi September 🌻
I just recently found your channel and I'm so happy I did! It's so refreshing to see a booktuber who's so positive, even when being critical, and has a wider perspective (tangents are great!). It's also interesting how you feature a mix of my favorite series and ones I've never heard of. Earthsea is kinda both. It was one of the first and most loved fantasy series I read as a child, but that's just the first trilogy, as the later books hadn't come out yet (I'm old...). They were actually never published in my country, so I was not even aware of them until very recently, and then I got strangely purist about "the original Earthsea" and avoided them completely. But I think I'll take this video as the push I needed to get off my nostalgic high horse and go read them already.
That's wonderful! I think that's very common to not go back to a series in case it isn't as good. I'm glad I encouraged you to try more Earthsea.
Lol don't encourage me to do tangents! I already do too many! 🤣🤣
“They don’t like writing the struggle”
*Robin Hobb has entered the chat*
Love Earthsea and love that you’re bringing attention to it! 👏👏👏
HAHA!!! Brilliant! 🤣🤣🤣
Great. Love the coming of age definition. Going all the way back to Aristotle gotta get that struggle in that character arc to make it sing. I am with you on the all books are good books sentiment. I often say fight the shelf Nazis and go to a different section than you are used to. A lot of great stuff in the YA and children’s sections. As always thanks.
Theyre such short books, but they feel like theyre thoundsands of pahes. Its magic. Im 35 now and mustve read thrm first when i was 12 or so. Everytime im by the coast i want read them again. Theyre just soooo good!
Ged had copper colored skin. She said it was like Native American. Her father was a famous anthropologist who had many Native American friends. She grew up around them.
Magic coming from knowing the name of things makes me think immediately of Rothfuss, clearly influenced by LeGuin.
Always been in my TBR pile, now more than ever!
Thank you so much for this discussion! I have reached for Earthsea many times and then put it back on the shelf because of its "children's literature" status. I will now begin the first book and look forward to reading the origin story of a young hero's journey. Peace~
Love the channel. However, as for fantasy coming of age stories I submit Taren of Caer Dallben. Lloyd Alexander’s main character of the Prydain Chronicles was not a wizard but following his coming of age story informed my own.
Great video as always! Still haven't ready any Ursula book but I've had two for years now, the dispossessed and the left hand of darkness, I'm gonna add this series to the tbr :)
I think a lot of earlier works that then, or now, are labelled YA or similar are on a whole different level than what is published under that banner now. It’s why I will read the earlier works but not the later YA. I don’t look down on anyone who enjoys it, but I need my literature a bit deeper than most YA is these days.
If you want to try another series that has done the coming of age story very well, try Witches of Eileanan by Kate Forsyth
Wow just found you. You are a great teacher, I cant wait to catch up on your other videos this is such a refreshing booktube channel
Thank you!
Haha it's funny, my parents always wanted me to be a teacher. We even had the whole discussion of, 'no dad, it's YOUR dream!' 🤣 Now looks like I'm a teacher after all. Ironic. 🤣
Loved this video, particularly the part about language and readability. I personally love Ursual’s writing style.
I’m actually not sure there is no LGBT in Earthsea. I see book 3, the Farthest Shores as a love story too. The boy is definitely mesmerized... The word "love" is in there once or twice, and I interpreted it literally. But maybe that’s just me.😄
There in book 6 the sorcerer that went to see Get had two mothers. Witches marry each others.
I love these videos, so mich detail so well delivered! Thank you Cronk! Looking forward to Sci-Fi September!
Wow, I'm so happy I stumbled upon your channel while getting into Ursula K Le Guins work! 🥳Loved the video
I pity the kids nowadays who were no longer reading and watching too many Tiktoks.
I've only read the first four books - The Other Wind is on my shelves, I'm planning to reread the others first and maybe if I ever get my copy back from my brother I will do just that (it's that four-in-one monster you have sitting on your shelf there). I was going to skip Tales from Earthsea, short stories not really being my thing, but you've convinced me to give it a go.
I think if the Peter Jackson films hadn't happened, or if Earthsea had got a decent screen adaptation (Le Guin said Ghibli's Earthsea wasn't her story but was a good film, and she was half right), I think it'd be more widely recognised that Earthsea was at least as influential as Tolkien's works.
just stumbled on your channel this was the first video I watched right on man i'll be watching all of them :)
I know a lot of people who are dismissive of Earthsea, because it’s “kids literature”. The thing is, really good “YA fiction” is great for everyone, adult or youngster alike…..like Susan Coopers “Dark is Rising” cycle or “Elidor” and “The Weirdstone” books by Alan Garner. Yes, targeted at young adults(is it just me or is “young adult” not THE most cringeworthy term EVER?) but definitely NOT only for them alone. A good book, is a good book, no matter the target audience.
Agreed. So many adults would love kids books if they just tried it.
You genuinely don’t understand how much I love Earthsea. My English teacher recommended it to be early in high school and I only read the first book a year later. Then skipped a few months and read the second book, and from then on I was plowing through them. But then I realized the Earthsea World had 6 books! I was so happy, these books are so beautiful and smart and moving and Ged is seriously one of my favorite book characters ever. So is Lebannen/Arren. It’s so insane. I’m currently reading ‘Tales from Earthsea’, the last one I haven’t read, and it’s just as good. No complaint. I need to go back and increase my ratings for this series because after some thinking these books ABSOLUTELY DESERVE THE LOVE!
It makes me so happy to see you loving Earthsea this much! This is the appropriate response to such a wonderful series! 👏
You had me at Dragons
Hi and thanks for your well researched video! I read trilogy 1 as a teen, but did not know that since then there is a second trilogy out, now I know 😊
Ordered a copy with the first four books in 😂 my tbr list is so long but at least I won’t run out of books to read any time soon.
If Red Rising isn’t in Sci Fi September, I’m not sure what deserves to be 😂. My fav book series of all time. Golden Son is perfection
I literally finished Golden Son last night. What an amazing book
@@MarkGuterman it might be my fav book ever across all books and categories lol
People often miss that " TALES Of EARTHSEA" is a collection of love stories set in Earth Sea. Even Ged makes a brief appearance in one story; young and robust. The book is a sweet, satisfying drought of this place we love. It answers questions about the past that we crave to know and brings us to the threshold of " THE OTHER WIND". In some ways it remains my favorite of the cycle.
Aw, I see you are a fellow Whovian. Nice
Le Guin was a daoist (although more philosophically than religiously or alchemically). While it's not really ever explicit about it Earthsea is probably her work where that influence is most clear in it's themes and underlying assumptions. Even more so then the Lathe of Heaven, which is named after and qoutes lines from Zhuangzi. It's therefore fitting that, although this wasn't really her intention when writing, the series ended up being made out of two equal but somewhat opposing parts that make a greater whole, like yin and yang. Iirc she even refered to the first three books as the "masculine" part of the cycle and the last three books as the "feminine" part. (Yin is considered to be "feminine" and Yang to be "masculine". Note I'm almost 100% certain le Guin didn't belive in any literal (often westernized New Age-y) 'masculine and female energies' interpretations of this.)
Also a small point: iirc most of the people on the main/central islands of Earthsea are Native-American-looking in apparence with brown skin. Vetch by contrast is explicitly black and is said to be from the East Reach (in the south-east of Earthsea). When I read the books I imagined Arren and Tehanu to also be black, but I'm not sure why. (Then again I also thought Tenar was asian until it became clear she was white.)
A thought on Earthsea's demographic: I always thought that Earthsea (at least the original trilogy) was Young Adult instead of Middle Grade because in every library, bookstore, and online resource it's listed as YA.
In BookTube, I've noticed that while Adult and YA speculative fiction are often given the bulk of the attention, Middle Grade isn't unless the author is well-known. To be entirely fair, most Middle Grade is what I call "bookshelf fodder", books written for the sole purpose of taking up shelf space (things like Geronimo Stilton and its _many_ spin-offs, everything written under the Erin Hunter umbrella, Magic Treehouse, Animorphs, Ranger's Apprentice, etc), but there are some thoughtfully written books or series here and there with a definitive ending like The Animals of Farthing Wood or Percy Jackson.
However, some works _start out_ as Middle Grade and then mature into YA, or sit awkwardly between the demographics like they're a guy straddling a very thin fence. For example, Harry Potter starts out as Middle Grade, but as he and the readers in real time aged, he was dealing with a more and more adult world until the ending of the series ended up squarely as Young Adult. And I see it both in YA and Middle Grade sections of stores and libraries.
Likewise, I've been reading the Wingfeather Saga and book resources seem so torn on what to call it. The quartet has very tongue-in-cheek humor with things like toothy cows and silly little sprites who can be won over if you give em fruit, but it deals with very mature themes of ritualistic child sacrifice, loss of identity, child enslavement, and so on. I've seen it in Middle Grade, but I could just label it as "the younger side of YA" or "Middle Grade teetering on the edge of YA".
On that note, would you ever be interested in covering the works of Gail Carson Levine? Namely her fractured fairy tales Ella Enchanted, Fairest, Ever, A Tale of Two Castles, and The Two Princesses of Bamarre? She's squarely a Middle Grade author and I never see her works touched upon due to this, but they're wonderful for a kid who loves reading.
Final thing, I swear. Your Throne of Glass recap is among the recommended videos on the side here and while they're all fine and dandy, Middle Grade fantasy can often supplant the need for gateway fantasy when you're reading Fablehaven or The Girl Who Drank the Moon instead of Cam Jansen or The Boxcar Children or whatever. Not to say gateway fantasy is _never_ needed, but that it _may not be_ needed.
Stop, stop! you make me want to read all these things, but I can only read 3 things at the same time ;) Anyway, thanks again for a great video! Got the big red book waiting on my shelf :P
One of my favourite books much closer to majic than many others
I have this series in English yet I’m not a native English speaker. But I needed it to read in original language too. This is an excellent piece as it is. ☝️💙
Help me out... Where do you point parents whose kids finished Harry Potter and want something like that?
Heya - just saw this comment! I can recommend the Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend for something similar with magic school and mysteries, and a lot of kids go from HP to Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan (Greek mythology based adventuring). The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer is also excellent (urban fantasy for middle grade readers, but I’ve also re-read it as an adult and it holds up!).
Thank you for the great review, I remember reading the series {when it was a quartet} and being very moved by the writing.
I wish we were friends dude
You can absolutely consider us friends, my good buddy. 👍 take care, mate.
@@cronkthebookguy Thanks! It's nice to meet you 🤝 😞
Gahhhh cut off right as we get to the shot guy 😂
?Will you be exploring discussing science fiction/fantasy as writers like Sanderson, Jordan and Le Guin have/or intend to write/ or with elements of, Science Fiction? @cronkthebookguy
Great video! I’ve read the first 4 books so far, and Farthest Shore is my favorite so far too. Such an amazing world and engaging characters.
Just finished the first trilogy and found it’s influence undeniable. My favorite example is that the College of Winterhold in the game Skyrim is basically a copy and paste of the Wizard College in Rorke.
Tehanu is for me the best one... She really nailed the theme there. Her social comentary, the woman pov in a "Magic" universe. But it never came arrogant or preachy, the theme served the history, the world she wanted to create, not like modern litarature were the history is only a propaganda medium to deliver a message. The Ged trilogy is after all a standard (OFC gold standard) coming of age history, but in the last three books she opened the term of "magic" to all people and really made that world alive. Tenar and Ged were real people, no archetypes, and Therru and Arren were simple breathtaking. The ending of that series is by far unmatched.