The Complete Earthsea

URSULA K. LE GUIN’S FANTASY MASTERPIECE, COMPLETE IN THE DEFINITIVE LIBRARY OF AMERICA EDITION OF HER WORKS “To return to Earthsea today is to encounter a different kind of fantasy work, where knowing oneself is a painstaking, ceaseless endeavor. . . . It is what the story is about, and the wonders Earthsea offers are scaled accordingly, to the sublime horizons of a life.” —Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels and stories are set in the far-flung archipelago of Earthsea. The original three novels in the 1960s and 70s were the first and most successful of the descendants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and were the progenitors, in their turn, of all the wizard school and dragonlord fantasy series that have come since. But then Le Guin returned 18 years later, after “all the thought and rethinking of the second wave of feminism,” with 3 more novels to complete the series. Now, all 6 books are featured in Library of America’s The Complete Earthsea, a handsome, heirloom boxed set. Included are: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the original wizard school fantasy, follows a young man called Sparrowhawk, whose true name—a source of power not to be shared with others—is Ged, as he both learns to wield the magic in him and discovers its shadow side. In The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Le Guin’s focus shifts to a young woman whose true name was taken from her when she became priestess of the Nameless Ones, the dark old powers of Earthsea. When Ged arrives to steal her temple’s greatest treasure, Tenar recovers her name and learns the gifts of interdependence and weakness. And in The Farthest Shore (1972), Ged is Archmage of all Earthsea when he embarks on a long journey with the teenage Prince Arren to find out why magic seems to be draining out of the Archipelago, a journey that will lead them to the end of the world and the dry land of death beyond. Tehanu (1990), in which the widowed Tenar adopts a badly burned and abandoned child, a girl she na