The Book Depository The Farthest Shore by Ursula K Le Guin
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Price: £10.32
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: The Farthest Shore : Paperback : SIMON & SCHUSTER : 9781442459939 : 144245993X : 20 Sep 2012 : The National Book Award-winning third novel in the renowned Earthsea series from Le Guin gets a beautiful new repackage. Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. The Book Depository The Farthest Shore by Ursula K Le Guin - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781442459939
MPN: 144245993X
GTIN: 9781442459939
Author: Bookends & Bagends
Rating: 5
Review: The Farthest Shore is the final book of the Earthsea Trilogy, though thankfully not the final tale set in this wondrous realm. It’s plot can be summed up in five words - ‘Earthsea is losing it’s magic.’ Much like everything I’ve experienced here while sailing the foam-flecked seas, bargaining with gloriously fierce dragons, and stumbling through the darkened labyrinth of malevolent gods - it’s not as simple as it seems. We don’t have ‘magic’ magic in the real world, but we definitely have a type of magic. Language both written and spoken, art, craft, love, joy in soil and water and wind. All these things are true magic, all things are life, and it is these things that are being drained from Earthsea - and from us. The Farthest Shore was a bit of a slow burn book for me and was looking to be a four-star read until near the end. If the themes of the book were heat, I was the proverbial frog in a pot and almost didn’t realise just how hot it was. In previous reviews, I’m mentioned just how current Ursula K. Le Guin’s work is, and The Farthest Shore is no exception. Here we have people coveting immortality which ultimately requires the trading of vibrant life for soulless existence. For the first time, there is drug use, chemical-dependence to fill a self-created void. Add to this rampant materialism and greed - pretty current, no? While I don’t have any idea about the times that this book was written, it sounds like a warning cry to society, one that perhaps unheeded. - ‘What is evil?’ asked the younger man. The round web, with its black centre, seemed to watch them both. ‘A web we men weave,’ Ged answered. Despite the above, it’s not a bleak crushing story, as with the preceding two books it’s cathartic in a way and ultimately redemptive. Ursula K.Le Guin’s characters are some of the most beautifully realised in fantasy with wonderfully organic growth, perfectly natural arcs. Over just 478 pages, albeit comprising three books, we see Sparrowhawk grow from boy to adult, to man. To me now he feels like a real person, and as much as a fictional character can be, a friend. Arren, Sparrowhawk’s companion in this adventure is also a deep and intricate character. His development here is not unlike Sparrowhawk’s in a Wizard of Earthsea in that he discovers both himself and the wider concept of balance. - ‘Sparrowhawk said only ‘To see a candle’s light one must take it into a dark place’ With that Arren tried to comfort himself; but he did not find it very comforting.’ The writing as ever is lyrical and so exquisitely emotive that you can’t help but ravenously devour page after page, the narrative constantly bursting on the palette of your mind. - ‘The lightning would leap among the clouds, and the thunder would bellow, and still the mage stood with upraised hand, until the rain came pouring down on him, and on Arren, and into the vessels they had set out, and into the boat, and onto the sea, flattening the waves with its violence.’ There are also some of the most beautiful descriptions of dragons, which I wanted to quote but you really should experience them yourself out in the wild! More of the world is revealed to us and as ever it’s - chef’s kiss - from the dingy streets of Hort to the wooden timbers of raft-city. It’s such an amazingly diverse and represented world which has rightly earned Ursula K. Le Guin the label ‘colossus of literature, and of anthropological and feminist science fiction in particular’ So yeah, this book is just as good as the first two in the trilogy. But know it is slower, less the vigorous dash of youth and more the purposeful stride of hard-earned wisdom. It is also not the end. It is a beginning. The themes and unadulterated diversity are all things I see people crying out for in modern fantasy, and so it's likely I'm going to 'Malazan' Earthsea; Can anyone recommend a good romance novel? - Read Earthsea :) How about a modern dystopia? - Read Eathsea :) Reading these books you see so many roots of modern fantasy. The words are like the DNA of a great literary juggernaut and in them you can see the influences and the branching lines that evolved into handfuls of authors and novels.
Author: Denis Bridoux
Rating: 4
Review: Good to get the whole series in Kindle format. However, the missing star is due to the fact that the map at the beginning of each volume are VERY POORLY reproduced. Their low definition makes it virtually impossible to decipher the names of the islands. In addition, the missing middle map section deletes some of the islands, or parts of them, which makes it all but unusable. A reader who doesn't have a hard copy to refer to, or who wouldn't make the effort to download a high quality map from the author's website, would be hard put to follow the travel of the protagonists. The map sections should be resampled as a matter of urgency, as they are essential to the understanding of the story.
