Tales from Earthsea

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Tales from Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 2001, is a collection of short stories from Le Guin's Earthsea world.

The collection contains the following stories:

• "The Finder", which tells of the founding of the school of magic on Roke Island
• "Darkrose and Diamond" (previously published in 1999 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), a tale of romance between the daughter of a witch and the son of a rich merchant
• "The Bones of the Earth", wherein Ogion the Silent deals with an earthquake
• "On The High Marsh", the story of the arrival of a mysterious healer in a remote village
• "Dragonfly" (previously published in 1997 in Legends), which provides a postscript to the novel The Farthest Shore

Also included is an article titled "A Description of Earthsea".

A common thread to all the stories is the effort to reinterpret the world of Earthsea. The books of the original trilogy presented Earthsea in general and the practice of magic in particular as strongly male-dominated. Women can only be witches, which is the lowest and most despised rank of the magical world, expressed in the proverb "Weak as women's magic, wicked as women's magic".

The stories collected here make a big effort to redress the balance. It is disclosed that Ogion, Ged's beloved tutor and mentor, had learned his magic from a master who himself learned from an "unauthorised" woman mage, and that the Roke school itself had been originally founded by women who were later excluded from it. Other stories feature strong and assertive women who in various ways challenge male dominance.

[edit] External links

• A comprehensive review of Tales From Earthsea
• Earthsea series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database