023/053: The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition — Ursula Le Guin

2023/053: The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition — Ursula Le Guin

I’m not sure if the dragons will ever return out of the west beyond the west, yet I know Tehanu will. I know where Ged goes next. But the storyteller doesn’t tell all she knows. When the story is over she falls silent. Then, after a while, perhaps she says, “But listen now! I have another tale to tell! [loc. 17466]

That rare artefact, an illustrated Kindle book where the illustrations -- beautiful illustrations, by Charles Vess -- are clear, visible and well-integrated. This was a 99p Kindle Daily Deal in June '22, and it contains all six books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind), together with miscellaneous shorter Earthsea fiction, and fascinating introductions and afterwords by Le Guin.

I think I'd read all the fiction before, apart from the four late stories. But I've been reading and rereading A Wizard of Earthsea for nearly half a century, for so long that it's become part of me: while somehow I didn't get around to reading The Other Wind for over a decade after its 2001 publication, and have, as far as I recall, not reread it until now.

I read the whole sequence, start to finish, over a long weekend, and it was an immersive and utterly delightful experience. ( Read more... )