skybridge

lbrunner.net · @lbrunner.net@bridge.neodb.net

Rated A Wizard of Earthsea 8/10

LeGuin's own afterwords basically address all my issues with this book. She nicely subverted the readers' expectations by not mentioning a lot of characters' skin colors right away, especially the main character who is non-white (like most, especially "good", characters). All white characters are treacherous or evil in some kind. This is a nice reversal. And it's sad to see that this didn't extend to gender (which LeGuin's acknowledges herself), as this basically looks like a very standard SFF boy coming-of-age story (with a very unexpected ending I would say!), as most women characters are in the background of the action.



The story is very nice, fairly lyrically/poetically rendered and doesn't focus on power creep for the sake of it or battles or action scenes. It feels very magical which means that it works.



In any case, very good book, hope the next one addresses some of those gender "issues".

#book

Published 2019-07-31 14:14 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere