Over time, Ursula K Le Guin wrote her Earthsea stories. She later took apart some of what she built early on—she changed her mind, and changed her Earthsea world. I’m not at all upset or in disagreement with her over this. I am actually more into this than an author who ignores or is embarrassed by their earlier works. I’m happy people change their minds, it gives me hope. The question here is this: now that she has deconstructed parts of her world, what does Le Guin do with it? The answer is quite simply that she continues to deconstruct it, taking apart the afterlife on Earthsea. That’s the theme of the book: death.
But there’s a problem with death here. You’ll need to remember The Farthest Shore to understand. The problem with death is that dead human souls go to the Dry Lands, where they have a listless, colorless existence, an eternal life of boredom. Well, turns out, the Dry Lands once belonged to the Dragons, humans stole it so long ago only the black wizards of Paln remember that, and Dragons want to claim it back. Some forgotten spell set up the Dry Lands, and apparently messed a bunch else up too in Earthsea. So the heroes research and talk and decide to bring in more voices to their discussion. Finally, by deconstructing the containing wall of their afterlife, the immortal human souls are then able to rejoin the cycle of life, death, and rebirth instead of being trapped in a black and white world, a fake immortality. This also means the humans are able to live up to their end of their ancient treaty with the Dragons, reconciling the two cultures—that’s the main plot—and in the meantime a subplot reconciles the Kargish lands with the rest of Earthsea, and another subplot also reconciles the black magicians of Paln with the Roke Wizards.
This plot relies on what her earlier books contained. The referential nature of this book clearly means that this is not a book to read unless you’ve read some other Earthsea first. Even then, it’s a fairly strange plot on the surface. But though Le Guin seems to be just talking about this made up world’s death and afterlife, this outlandish fantasy plot is actually doing something applicable. She’s talking about looking around, questioning what is, realizing that some of reality is the result of ancient, forgotten errors, and then doing what needs done to fix it despite the fact that those old mistakes are not ours. Taking responsibility for fixing problems that weren’t ours to begin with, reparations, the strength of humility, overcoming biases and fears to allow change for the better, sacrifice, the importance of wisdom and power. It’s a strong theme that really came home for me as a contemporary analogy to post-colonialist country borders.
But that’s not all the book does. Le Guin weaves in the tales of her characters: Alder, Idrian, Tenar, Tehanu, Lebannen, Ged, Seserakh, the master wizards of Roke. The story focuses on their day to day, on trying to get along with each other, on the conflict inherent in trying to come to grips with their discovery of what’s wrong with death. In other words, the heroes do heroic things, but they’re just people. In the midst of all this crazy, metaphysical, mythological repatriation, Seserakh’s sea-sickness is a major plot point. Tehanu’s shyness proves important throughout. Alder trying to deal with dreaming about his recently-dead wife sets this whole book off. And there are a hundred other examples of how Le Guin keeps these heroes people and not archetypes. It’s a strong tactic that made this book memorable for me. It adds complexity to the narrative and contextualizes the heroes’ quest in the same way Gawain and the Green Knight did so well—though much more completely than that text.
And that should be enough said. This is a great book, but it utterly relies on the reader having read the three preceding books in the series, at least. Le Guin balances the overarching, fantasy plot with relatable, human subplots perfectly. She relates her fantasy plot to current ideas about redrawing the map of the world, things like letting Tibet and Kurdistan exist, redressing mistakes made during the colonial era, getting cultures to work together, doing the courageous to fix the mistakes of the past, and taking responsibility for actions not that were done by you, but which are perpetuated by you. It’s a great book that doesn’t get bogged down by these high themes, nor does it lose itself in the details of the characters’ lives, but it shows just enough of both to allow the book to work well as a closing novel in this series of six books. Because it was more complex, I was more into this one than the other books in the series, and the first five were so good that I didn’t regret having to read them to fully appreciate this masterpiece at all.
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