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kamifrancis 's review for:
The Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. Le Guin
I didn't like this book as much as A Wizard of Earthsea or The Tombs of Atuan. Since it is the third in the series, I suppose it makes sense - a little darker, a bit less satisfying. I just found Arren mostly uninteresting and the journey too long and weary.
BUT! I dog-eared more pages than I did the other two because there were so many striking passages (see two below). I'm still enchanted by the description of the Children of the Open Sea. This story is quite esoteric and I liked elements of that, but overall I don't feel the need to read it again.
● ● ●
"Can it be a kind of pestilence, a plague, that drifts from land to land, blighting the crops and the flocks and men's spirits?"
"A pestilence is a motion of the great balance, of the Equilibrium itself; this is different. There is the stink of evil in it. We may suffer for it when the balance of things rights itself, but we do not lose hope, and forego art, and forget the words of the Making. Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that."
"A man?" Arren said, tentative.
"We men."
"How?"
"By an unmeasured desire for life."
"For life? But it isn't wrong to want to live?"
"No. But when we crave power over life - endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality - then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale."
● ● ●
"If I love life shall I not have the end of it?"
"Life without end," the mage said. "Life without death. Immortality. Every soul desires it, and its health is the strength of its desire. But be careful, Arren. You are the one who might achieve your desire."
"And then?"
"And then - this. This blight upon the lands. The arts of man forgotten. The singer tongueless. The eye blind. And then? A false king ruling. Ruling forever. And over the same subjects forever. No births; no new lives. No children. Only what is mortal bears life, Arren. Only in death is there rebirth. The Balance is not a stillness. It is a movement - an eternal becoming."
BUT! I dog-eared more pages than I did the other two because there were so many striking passages (see two below). I'm still enchanted by the description of the Children of the Open Sea. This story is quite esoteric and I liked elements of that, but overall I don't feel the need to read it again.
● ● ●
"Can it be a kind of pestilence, a plague, that drifts from land to land, blighting the crops and the flocks and men's spirits?"
"A pestilence is a motion of the great balance, of the Equilibrium itself; this is different. There is the stink of evil in it. We may suffer for it when the balance of things rights itself, but we do not lose hope, and forego art, and forget the words of the Making. Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that."
"A man?" Arren said, tentative.
"We men."
"How?"
"By an unmeasured desire for life."
"For life? But it isn't wrong to want to live?"
"No. But when we crave power over life - endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality - then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale."
● ● ●
"If I love life shall I not have the end of it?"
"Life without end," the mage said. "Life without death. Immortality. Every soul desires it, and its health is the strength of its desire. But be careful, Arren. You are the one who might achieve your desire."
"And then?"
"And then - this. This blight upon the lands. The arts of man forgotten. The singer tongueless. The eye blind. And then? A false king ruling. Ruling forever. And over the same subjects forever. No births; no new lives. No children. Only what is mortal bears life, Arren. Only in death is there rebirth. The Balance is not a stillness. It is a movement - an eternal becoming."