Before bright Éa was, before Segoybade the islands be,the wind of dawn blew on the sea. 8/10Coming back once more to the classic fantasy series a decade after the publication of the last novel, Tehanu, thinking at the time that she had reached the end of her character’s tales and wanting – after being asked to write more stories – to explore her fantastical world from its past to its present time, Ursula Le Guin delves in the Tales from Earthsea, the fifth book of the Earthsea Cycle, into the

"That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.”- Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea Solid. A couple of the stories really resonated with me (The Finder, On the High Marsh, Dragonfly). I cried at the end of one, and one made me pause for half-a-day chewing on it. Overall, I prefer her novels (or novellas) and this showed in this series because I gravitated towards the longer stories. Like with Tehanu, Le Guin alters the form. She is focused as much on the commu...

If you read nothing else from this collection, you should grab this to read ‘Dragonfly’. The other stories fill in bits and pieces of the background, or use the world to tell a new story that is small in scope compared to Ged’s. ‘Dragonfly’, on the other hand, is necessary (to my mind) to really understanding The Other Wind, and should definitely be read first. It introduces a character who becomes important, and events which are referred to throughout the novel.As for the writing of the stories...

Re-read to celebrate my 500th review on my blog. Here it is:https://reiszwolf.wordpress.com/2020/...

Tales from Earth Sea (The Earthsea Cycle, #5), Ursula K. Le GuinTales from Earthsea is a collection of fantasy stories and essays by American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Harcourt in 2001. It accompanies five novels (1968 to 2001) set in the fictional archipelago Earthsea. The Finder. The school of magic is established on Roke island.The Bones of the Earth. Ogion the Silent deals with an earthquake.Darkrose and Diamond (1999). This features romance between the daughter of a witch and t...

Well, I enjoyed these short stories. There were good and provided the me with a bit more detail about the world and the characters that inhabit it. It was interesting reading on the backstories about certain events. I’ll just say that I wasn’t as invested in them as I would have liked. It wasn’t that they were bad, but rather, I just found myself not caring too much about the characters, even if the stories themselves were well written. I’m not going to review each short story individually, but

UKL is one of my favorite authors of all time, one of two authors (along with Tolkien) whose fantasy I love because it feels real to me down to the deepest level. This book is five stories set in the same world as her Earthsea novels. All five are just jewels. They flesh out that universe a bit more, in quite interesting ways, and all are delightful in their own right, as well. One is from the time that Ged is Archmage. Another is from after his time. One is from long ago, telling something of h...

"Do you trust me, Dragonfly?""Yes.""Will you trust me entirely, wholly-knowing that the risk I take for you is greater even than your risk in this venture?""Yes.""Then you must tell me the word you will speak to the Doorkeeper."She stared. "But I thought you'd tell it to me-the password.""The password he will ask you for is your true name."He let that sink in for a while, and then continued softly, "And to work the spell of semblance on you, to make it so complete and deep that the Masters of Ro...

These stories were not nearly as compelling as the first four Earthsea books, either in the plot or the writing. Also, several stories seem overly concerned with demonstrating that women have more importance in Earthsea than the fist three books indicate, especially the last story, "Dragonfly." This story and the first one, "The Finder," read as though the author is trying to re-write women into the Earthsea stories as an afterthought. I didn't mind their near absence in the first three books, s...

On the whole, a pretty interesting collection of stories. I'm still uneasy about the fact that LeGuin felt the need to go back and change Earthsea, make it more "politically correct"- but, if you can get over that, her writing is still quite good. "The Bones of the Earth" was probably my favorite story of five, brief and heart-wrenching. "The Finder" dragged on for a bit too long, I felt; "Darkrose and Diamond" had a bitter ending, not what I was expecting at all. All along, I cherished a foolis...

I've been putting this one off for a while, because I knew it was a collection of stories versus an actual novel. I'm generally much pickier about short story collections and have a harder time keeping my interest in them.This was really well done though. Parts were less interesting than others, but overall the quality was on par with the first four books of Earthsea. It gets away from the harsh realism of the last book, Tehanu, and it gets back to the magical mysticism of the original Earthsea

“Silence is not enough, my lord...Silence is the answer to everything, and to nothing.”Really wonderful book. I had gotten used to the novel-length pacing of the previous four books, but I found that this collection (of short stories) held my interest and maintained the same quality of story-telling and characters/character development. I want to say a few preliminary things before I get into my review, then I'll go story by story. One very useful piece of information for would-be readers before...

My Earthsea experience was a long time ago--it's been at least 10 years since I read any of them. Back then, I plowed through the original trilogy and was sort of surprised by Tehanu, which I found kind of slow. I told myself, "Newer Le Guin just isn't my thing."But it turns out that I was wrong, not Le Guin; clearly I just needed to grow up a bit. These 5 stories showed me that sometimes thoughtful, strong, tree-like characters are more interesting than ACTION-PACKED ACTION. They're beautiful a...

I reread this after about a decade as I often do with UKL's short stories and novellas ( and novels- poetry and essays, not so much). This is Le Guin filling in the details and rounding out the corners of her epic Earthsea saga. If there's a theme in this collection it's to chronicle the contributions of women to Earthsea ( the society described in the first trilogy was a proper little patriarchy, which Le Guin subversively sets out to dismantle in her second trilogy.). In the novella "The Finde...