Tales from Earthsea

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin

The tales of this book explore and extend the world established by Ursula K. Le Guin's must-listen Earthsea Cycle. "The magic of Earthsea is primal; the lessons of Earthsea remain as potent, as wise, and as necessary as anyone could dream." (Neil Gaiman)

This collection contains the novella "The Finder," and the short stories "The Bones of the Earth," "Darkrose and Diamond," "On the High Marsh," and "Dragonfly." It concludes with an account of Earthsea's history, people, languages, literature, and magic.

With stories as perennial and universally beloved as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of The Rings—but also unlike anything but themselves—Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels are some of the most acclaimed and awarded works in literature. They have received accolades such as the National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, the Nebula Award, and many more honors, commemorating their enduring place in the hearts and minds of readers and the literary world alike.

Join the millions of fantasy listeners who have explored these lands. As The Guardian put it: "Ursula Le Guin's world of Earthsea is a tangled skein of tiny islands cast on a vast sea. The islands' names pull at my heart like no others: Roke, Perilane, Osskil … "

©2001 Ursula K. Le Guin (P)2017 Recorded Books

“What matters is whose house we live in"

Ursula K. Le Guin’s fifth Earthsea book, Tales from Earthsea (2001), collects two novellas, three short stories, and a Description of Earthsea. Though some of the tales are better than others, all of them are vintage Le Guin: thought-provoking, imaginative, original, moving, and poetically and precisely written. The characters are compelling and the action suspenseful, without relying on violent action. Except for the novella “Dragonfly,” which is “a dragon bridge” between the fourth and fifth Earthsea novels, the stories are stand alones.

In the Foreword (well read by Christina Moore), Le Guin talks about things like the commodification of fantasy, how she came to revisit Earthsea after having subtitled Tehanu “The *Last* Book of Earthsea,” and how real world history writing is similar to fantasy world history writing. All with her wit and clarity.

“The Finder” is a moving novella about love, power, learning/teaching, and gender during a time of disunity, slavery, and tyranny, similar to what is going on around the later chaotic time of The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Otter’s boatwright father tries to beat the boy’s natural gift for magic out of him, until he is bound to work as a dowser for a crazy, amoral wizard looking for cinnabar to refine into quicksilver. How this hellish situation leads to the founding of Roke School (by men *and* women) makes an interesting story. Especially moving and neat are Otter’s relationships with a nude, deformed, mercury-poisoned female slave and with a pirate king’s “crafty man” finder, the Hound.
“All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.”
(4 stars)

“Darkrose and Diamond” is a romantic story about Diamond, the gifted son of a wealthy lumber merchant, who thinks he can only choose one thing, music, magic, or business, though his mother believes that everything in life is connected, tangled together. Will Diamond follow his bliss and his heart or fulfill his father’s desires? Will Diamond’s beloved Darkrose, daughter of a witch, fit into his life? Le Guin has decided that the voluntary celibacy of wizards is misguided, unnecessary, and possibly harmful.
“Why can’t you have everything you want?”
(3.5 stars)

In order to try to save Gont Port Town from being destroyed by an earthquake, the old wizard Dulse teams up with his former student Ogion to use a powerful elemental spell taught Dulse by his teacher Ard sixty years earlier. The perfectly crafted story, about relationships between teachers and students, fathers and sons, friends and friends, and humans and the earth, is moving. It also says subtle, potent things about gender. It’s poignant to see Ged’s old teacher as a young man.
“In the dark under the water all islands touch and are one.”
(5 stars)

The widow Gift thinks that a traveler who shows up one day at her farm is a king or a beggar. He is surely broken and may be mad, but she senses that he is a kind and true man and offers him hospitality, and he sets about healing the area cattle afflicted by an awful murrain. The story is like a western in which a damaged gunfighter shows up in a small town, hides his guns for fear of harming another person with them, and works on a widow’s ranch. What is the man’s story? Who is he running from? Is he dangerous or safe? When a scarred stranger called Hawk shows up at Gift’s farm, we expect a wizardly showdown. Will Le Guin subvert genre again? Her story is a moving middle-aged romance.
“The changes in a man's life may be beyond all the arts we know and all our wisdom.”
(4.5 stars)

“Dragonfly” is a novella about an uneducated, uncouth, large, vital, beautiful young woman who wants to find out who she is and so tries to enter the male-only Roke School for wizards disguised as a young man and catalyzes a change in the school. The story develops more of the human/dragon thing introduced by Tehanu. The relationship between Irian and a bitter expelled wizard from Roke called Ivory, is neat and funny. I love it when he tries to cast a love spell on Irian, and she punches him while her dog grins at him. The story links Tehanu (1990) to The Other Wind (2001).
“I think we should go to our house and open its doors.”
(4 stars)

After the five tales comes A Description of Earthsea, in which Le Guin writes a kind of encyclopedia entry on Earthsea, with topics like the traits and cultures and histories of the Hardic, Kargad, and Dragon peoples (including their Languages, Writing and Magic), the School on Roke, and Celibacy and Wizardry. Most of this appears here and there throughout her six Earthsea books, but it’s ever a pleasure to read Le Guin’s writing.
(3 stars)

The audiobook closes with a new Afterword (well read by Christina Moore) in which Le Guin explains why she published the fifth book of tales before she wrote the sixth novel. She uses an analogy between the “uncertain beginning of the last movement of Beethoven’s last symphony,” wherein he’s searching for the right way to go forward, and what she was trying to do with these tales: find the right way to finish her Earthsea cycle. She also talks about the need for the reality of imaginative fantasy literature in our contemporary virtual world.

The audiobook reader Jenny Sterlin is prime.

Good reading - but is it movie material?

As with the whole EarthSea set, it is the artistry, the phrase, the pondering thought. I have revisited the entire saga trying to answer the question why Studio Ghibli made such a mess of the story. Now, with older eyes, I can see that the series would make a much better source of cozy small-cast stage theatre rather than a melodramatic "movie" - there is hardly any movement in any of it.

love Earthsea

great fifth book of Earthsea, wrote well and full of short stories. If you enjoyed the previous four you should listen to this.

Earthsea is my favorite fantasy

this is a short story collection and there were some stories I liked more than others but Ursula Leguin is a fantastic author and this is a fantastic world so I still loved each one very much

Love this series

I absolutely loved this series! imaginative and bold in approach, these tales leave the reader wanting more!

Completely satisfying. Sterlin' s reading superb

Beloved stories, by my lifelong favourite writer, read superbly. What more could a person ask for?

loved it

loved it I wish there was more... I really enjoyed it see I even dream to sometimes and Percy then listen to it before I fell asleep

Ahhh Ursula

It’s good to come back to a master storyteller. And I will be following this narrator who brings a certain gravitas to the tales.

Awesome

Loved hearing the history of Earthsea. The stories were easy to connect with and I was emotionally invested in the characters. Especially in The Finder and in The Bones of the Earth.

Essential reading for fans of Earthsea Cycle

I seriously debated about whether or not to listen to this book because I just wanted to get on with the last book to find out what happened to Ged and Tenar...
I am so glad reason won and that I did listen to "Tales Of Earthsea". It lays essential back storylines, histories. I loved all of the stories. It is also well worth the time to listen to the forwards and afterwords of the author as they further understanding of the world of Earthsea. Listening to the author explaining her thought processes was fascinating. Great read!

My only complaint is that although Jenny Sterlin is a fantastic narrator for the most part, it was hard for me to listen to her grating attempt at the old men voices of the master wizards of Roke. I wondered if doing it made her throat sore. But this was a minor irritation that was easily overlooked.