Ursula K. Le Guin
1990
Awards: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ – – –
SPOILER ALERT
Tehanu is
the last book in Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle, a series of books set in a
rural middle-ages-y fantasy land filled with mages and dragons.
With all due respect to Ms. Le Guin, who has written some complex and groundbreaking books, the Earthsea series is really not my bag. And Tehanu is no exception.
For
one thing, there is not much of a plot. The main character, Goha, was
tutored as a girl by a powerful mage (i.e. wizard) but left that life as
a young woman to marry a farmer and raise a family. At the time of the
book, Goha is somewhere in middle age. She has adopted a girl, Therru,
who was so unwanted by her parents that she was permanently disfigured
in a fire that they set to kill her.
At the start of the book,
Goha and Therru travel far overland to see Goha’s old tutor, Ogion, who
is dying. After he dies, Goha and Therru stay on in his house and are
beset alternately by ruffians vaguely related to Therru’s parents and by
Aspen, an evil, Wormtongue-esque rival mage, who has it in for Goha for some reason.
They
while away the time at Ogion’s house amidst all of this until one day a
dragon comes, bearing the half-dead body of Ogion’s other pupil, Ged,
who was once a super-powerful arcmage but who lost his power defending
his master in a terrible battle. Goha nurses Ged back to health and then
they all make their way back to Goha’s farm, where they are beset by
the same ruffians they were beset by at Ogion’s house.
Then, when Goha’s estranged son comes to claim the farm, they all decide to go back to
Ogion’s place, where they again immediately run afoul of Aspen, who
puts a spell on Goha and Ged and is about to drive them off a cliff,
when Therru saves the day by calling the dragon to come back and rescue
them.
I spent the whole book thinking something was about to
actually happen but nothing ever really did. They mainly just travel
back and forth between Ogion’s and Goha’s houses, and are only
occasionally, and only briefly, in danger.
Le Guin’s treatment of
women in this book is also frustrating, given how good she can be at
representing the misunderstood or the different.
In Tehanu,
only men can be mages; women with magical powers can only be witches.
Mages are involved with big-time projects and politics; witches concern
themselves only with small-time magic like healing illnesses or finding
lost objects. In the plot, the men are the active elements and the women
are the ones who are passively acted upon; the men either put the
women in danger or save them – up to and including the male dragon at
the end.
Goha’s life has been split between her unusual magical
life under Ogion’s tutelage and her more ordinary human life with her
husband and children. She never really comes to grips with either one or
reconciles the two. She seems drawn towards magic, but never really
accepts the power it would give her, and tends to want to go running
back to the farm.
And, finally, the dragons in Tehanu are
just too dreamy for me. With the exception of the dragon in Shrek, I
like my dragons to be mean and uncompromisingly tough, fought by knights
with swords or by men and women with bows and arrows.
This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment