Visiting Earthsea

Most nights I read to Nizzibet. Lately I’ve been reading from the Earthsea novels by Ursula K. LeGuin. We’re currently about halfway through The Tombs of Atuan. The Earthsea books were examples to me of how a story changes depending on ones age. When I first read them as a kid, when there was only the Earthsea Trilogy, I remember liking A Wizard of Earthsea and being mostly bored by Tombs. Lots of stuff happens in Wizard. Ged travels all over Earthsea hunting the shadow he’s loosed. Tombs?. Arha/Tannar lives a life of ritual at a mostly forgotten temple in the middle of a desert. Not so exciting to me as a kid. As an adult now (and as a young man the second time I read it) the story is engaging and interesting because the writing is.

I started reading the series because we’d watched the SciFi Channel’s Earthsea miniseries and Nizz had enjoyed it. I couldn’t remember enough of the original novels to tell her what SciFi had changed. Ursula LeGuin has complained about the miniseries but her complaints have been primarily about casting. Rereading the novels has been great. The Earthsea of the novels is not a perky place.