rsula K. Le Guin began her famed Earthsea sequence in 1968, with A Wizard of Earthsea. The initial trilogy seemed complete with the addition of The Tombs of Atuan (1971) and The Farthest Shore (1972). But after nearly three decades of silence from this watery magical world, Le Guin resumed her mythos with Tehanu (1990) and Tales from Earthsea (2001). And although Tehanu was subtitled the "Last Book of Earthsea," it is only in the current volume that an ultimate sense of closure is obtained.
Our focus throughout the series has been Ged, a magically talented lad whom we have followed from his days as a wizardly apprentice; through his attainment of the rank of Archmage as a young man; to his decline and retirement as a quiet, wounded, elderly farmer. And although Ged plays his small part in this "last" narrative, the main focus is on other actors.
A minor hedge-magician named Alder visits Ged for advice on a dire problem. Alder cannot sleep, due to troubled dreams involving his dead wife and other spirits resident in the very tangible Earthsea afterworld—a domain Ged has personally traversed. Ged helps insofar as he is able, but counsels Alder to visit King Lebannen's court at Havnor. Ged suspects that Alder's problem bears on larger issues, issues which have previously drawn Ged's wife, Tenar, and their adopted daughter Tehanu—who is capable of speaking to dragons—to the court themselves.
But on Havnor, King Lebannen faces many other problems already. The normally aloof and neutral dragons of Earthsea have begun to attack human lands. A barbarian empire, the Kargs, has made a most disturbing peace overture: they have recently visited Havnor and deposited their princess, Seserakh, there with the implicit demand that Lebannen marry her to cement goodwill. And on the wizard's island of Roke, a tainted member of the ruling council has been incinerated by a dragon temporarily wearing human form.
Alder's arrival becomes one more piece of the larger puzzle. Slowly, with input from all parties—including two wizards named Onyx and Seppel, and the dragon in human form, Orm Irian—the larger picture becomes clear. All the divisions between men and dragons, between Havnor and Karg, prevalent across Earthsea for millennia, are the result of an ancient compact gone awry. All the assumptions on which daily life is predicated are about to be overturned, with only uncertainty awaiting on the other side of the climacteric. But action must be taken, or Earthsea will self-destruct, its very foundations proven to be an unstable lie.
A magical farewell from a master
Do you recall the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)? Titled "The Grey Havens," this epilogue saw Frodo and his band of fellow Ringbearers board a mystical ship for the land that waits "west of the Moon, east of the Sun," leaving a tearful Sam behind to carry on the quotidian duties of a new age. Mournful yet hopeful, elegiac yet forward-looking, this culmination of Tolkien's long saga was cathartic in the extreme, nearly too painful to endure.
Well, Le Guin's The Other Wind (the title itself refers to a manner of afterlife, the currents of air the dragons ride beyond our mortal sphere) is like "The Grey Havens" sustained for an entire novel. Here we experience the sound of an old world crashing to bits, so that a new one might be born. Hierarchies and truisms are overthrown, characters are permanently transfigured, and nothing will ever be the same again. This book casts a retroactive shadow over all that has come before, and it seems hard to imagine a sequel.
Without revealing the secret of how Earthsea went wrong, it is possible to mention that all the magic of Ged and his fellows, upheld previously as a positive craft aligned with an intuitive understanding of the deep structure of the universe, is now seen as an anti-life aberration. By choosing "good and evil" and seeking to circumvent death itself, the wizards have doomed themselves and every citizen of their realm to a fate literally worse than death. It is the slow realization of this error and the heroic decision to remedy the situation at whatever cost that form Le Guin's core tale. Of course, she also details an affecting love story between Lebannen and Seserakh, along with many other small-scale dramas, as well. But overall, this radical reworking of all privileges and priorities remains center stage, making this book a concentrated, slow-burning apocalypse.
"This is a strange time," Onyx admits fearfully to Lebannen, and while only the human heart holds any answers to the dilemma of the Earthsea people, that organ itself is rendered both something more and something less than during normal eras.
