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corvy707 's review for:
The Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. Le Guin
For a third time the world of Earthsea and its core inhabitant Ged is revisited, and for a third time the same messages are called upon. Le Guin likes to repeat herself allegorically, and that's okay, a common theme is nothing to turn your nose up at. Here as in The Tombs of Atuan the continuing thread of aging is renewed and progressed from where the last book left it sitting. The Farthest Shore is not as innovative as its aforementioned predecessor, though, and reading it at times feels like you're rereading the first title in the series but with an extra character thrown in. This is often intentional and cleverly parallel to previous events, but will sometimes sit as an unearned throwback.
Is it perhaps unfair to put a book with a standalone tale under such analysis? Perhaps, and I suspect if I had picked this up as an idle curiousity rather than a followup to books I loved a lot, I would never have the foggiest that it could have had such derivative aspects. Arren is a unique protagonist that could only exist in this world but with an arc universally relatable to one degree or another, Ged (though perhaps not as linearly connected to his past representations as I'd like) has had enough happen to him between stories that he is as new a character to returning readers as he is newcomers, and the story explores an untouched section of the Earthsea world. It's great fare for a standalone fantasy story.
But I can't help myself from comparing it to its companions. Aforementioned complaints aside, it doesn't quite hold up to the calm spiritual feeling that I associate them with. It has a clear and unambiguous antagonist, something of a square peg to Earthsea's circular hole (In all fairness, it's again very well executed for your average fantasy novel). In the farthest shore of The Farthest Shore, I suppose things are done a bit differently.
Is it perhaps unfair to put a book with a standalone tale under such analysis? Perhaps, and I suspect if I had picked this up as an idle curiousity rather than a followup to books I loved a lot, I would never have the foggiest that it could have had such derivative aspects. Arren is a unique protagonist that could only exist in this world but with an arc universally relatable to one degree or another, Ged (though perhaps not as linearly connected to his past representations as I'd like) has had enough happen to him between stories that he is as new a character to returning readers as he is newcomers, and the story explores an untouched section of the Earthsea world. It's great fare for a standalone fantasy story.
But I can't help myself from comparing it to its companions. Aforementioned complaints aside, it doesn't quite hold up to the calm spiritual feeling that I associate them with. It has a clear and unambiguous antagonist, something of a square peg to Earthsea's circular hole (In all fairness, it's again very well executed for your average fantasy novel). In the farthest shore of The Farthest Shore, I suppose things are done a bit differently.