This wonderful author wrote two beloved series that both prominently feature collections of short stories. This is the fifth book of Earthsea, and it’s a collection of short stories. That’s an unusual tactic. But I think that the short story, novella, novel, poem, play, and essay all have their own strengths. I also really enjoy short stories—China Mieville, Isaac Asimov, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka, Sherman Alexie, Ray Bradbury. Two questions guide these notes: why use short stories, and should this book stand alone?
1. Why short stories? What does Le Guin use this form to do? Pessimistically, short stories aren’t strong enough to stand on their own, they become a sort of fan service collection of lesser quality work, thrown away ideas. Optimistically, the concise form allows the author to focus on a single theme more, or, in this case where the short stories are part of a larger world, they can deal with characters that are not essential to the main stories of the world.
Here, Le Guin writes five stories, along with an introduction and the pseudo encyclopedic “Description of Earthsea”. These tales tie into the stories of the novels sometimes, and sometimes start their own stories. They run the gamut from historical context to origin story to small love story. And it is that variety that I love the most about this book. Rather than writing “Five Adventures of Ged”, she has taken the opportunity to flesh out her world significantly. Before this book, I thought of a small Earthsea. After this book I thought of a larger Earthsea, and I think that’s useful to the point of the book.
The five stories are:
“The Finder”: The original founding of Roke was done by women and men together, rather than the men-only tale that the school lies about now.
“Darkrose & Diamond”: A wizard of great potential gives it up for the love of a woman.
“The Bones of the Earth”: Ogion learns his greatest spell from a woman, and learns to despise Roke’s male-dominated nature—explaining why he isn’t archmage and why he looks with measured disdain on Roke.
“On the High Marsh”: A man seeking power was thrown into exile, this describes the exile and shows how he is redeemed by love.
“Dragonfly”: And the fifth tale is the epilogue to Tehanu, the novel that precedes this book, and the introduction to The Other Wind, the novel that succeeds this book. In this story, a woman who is part dragon gains access to the male-only college of wizards on Roke.
The first one fills in some gaps in Earthsea lore. By showing the importance of women to the early school on Roke, Le Guin changes the way I think about the characters in the novels. Gone is some of the awe for the wizards, as their petty superstitions about women get in the way of the true balance they are constantly paying lip service to.
The second story is one that wouldn’t fit into a novel easily—its length means that it wouldn’t work as an aside, and its content relies upon that length for power. Yet it’s just a small love story in some ways, and not complex enough to justify centering a new novel around it. So, this story perfectly works as a short story exploring an alternate Ged, one who fell in love with a girl and regrets giving it up for the power of magic.
The third story chronicles one of the legendary deeds attributed to Ogion in the novels—stopping the earthquake on Gont. Yet, by looking at it in detail, we see the network of friends who were essential to Ogion’s deed, especially the woman who sacrificed herself, selflessly knowing she would get no credit. This story probably could have fit into the first novel, or the third, or the fourth. But the short story form allows the writer to focus on the themes and characters more, and spend less time drawing it together with the novels, in a way that makes this a powerful stand-alone tale of Earthsea. Though it helps explain Ogion better, it is also simply an exciting tale to read.
The fourth story is probably the best one. It takes an antagonist from the novels, after he has been defeated and exiled, and shows his exile and redemption. He loved power, was defeated, realizes his mistakes, and now experiences the power of love as a path to redemption. Ged, the man who beat him, shows up simply to show forgiveness. It’s a tale of self-forgiveness, dealing with mistakes, and love that simply stands alone better than the rest of the stories in this book.
The fifth story sets up the central questions of the coming novel. Yet, like the first story, it relies heavily on the surrounding context of Earthsea as laid out in the novels to work at all. These characters of the Masters of Roke are sketchy here, and their reactions are better understood when having read the other novels. Yet, for a short story, this would be a distracting aside in any of the novels except the forthcoming one. This could have been the opening chapter of the next novel pretty easily, but the narrative structure is so self-contained that it may have been quite awkward.
In using the short story form, Le Guin is able to focus on different aspects of these characters and her Earthsea world. In general, Le Guin uses these short stories to flesh out the world of Earthsea. Some of these tales insert women into places of power and importance in Earthsea. This is a sort of retconning—and to me this term does not have a negative connotation at all. Who am I to enforce that an author never change their mind? Here, we have an author who decided to put women into stories that were generally thought to be male dominated in the past.
2. The second question then is whether these stories stand on their own enough, or if Earthsea knowledge is necessary for them to work. My impression is that the answer is a mixed bag. “On the High Marsh” stood out to me, for sure, as a great short story in its own right. And its my favorite because it seems to exist as a story Le Guin wanted badly to tell, without reference to the novels—though that reference is there for people who read the novels.
The other two middle stories mostly stand alone. But they are so enhanced by prior Earthsea experience, that I hesitate to call them great on their own right. They’re good stories, but I think that knowledge of the context helpfully points out some of the contradictions that make these stories enjoyable.
However, the opening and closing tales are so dependent on prior Earthsea knowledge that they disappoint as stand-alone short stories.
I’m always struggling to review sequels, books in series. I mean, on the one hand they don’t often stand on their own, and I really want them to. On the other hand, they are written for a specific audience, usually one who has read the prior book or books. I will just say that this book works as intended. As a reader of Earthsea, this book worked for me. But it wasn’t perfectly satisfying either, as I wanted more stand alone stories, and less tie-ins.
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