What Ever Happened to Earthsea? 

so glad to hear the praise for Tombs. You can’t help but hear Le Guin’s voice when reading it. Truly amazing and overlooked story, deserves to be in the fantasy canon.

Ged was the greatest painter in the world who lost his hands. Of course he despairs for a while, grieves. We are all eventually shadows of who we were. But Ged remains kind, respectful, loving, and still f*cking protects who he cares about. I think his story is great for anyone who feels powerless

I clearly have mind control over this channel. Every time I wonder "whatever happened [ insert setting here ]" you do a video on it.

The Tombs of Atuan is my favorite book of all time. I have never felt the way I did when I finished that book again.

I have so, so much to say about Earthsea. What a brilliant set of books, what an imaginative take on fantasy and story, Ursula Le Guin has opened my mind to many different ways a story can be; I've since gobbled up any book of hers I can find (most recently, Lathe of Heaven). On the Ghibli side of things, word on the street is Hayao Miyazaki was a HUGE fan c. 1980's and the series has been a huge influence for him; if you ask me, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind feels like it gets Earthsea more than the actual Ghibli Earthsea did.

Earthsea was one of my favorite books growing up. Right up there with The Alchemist and The Years of Rice and Salt.

I have a major soft spot for the ghibli adaptation, even if the plot is clunky, I just loose myself in its visuals and music and love putting it on as background noise while I work on projects :)

I love seeing Earthsea content, it made up a big part of my childhood :)

There is not enough about Earthsea on RU-vid. First the DinoTopia video NOW THIS!? You’ve got a sub.

In general, I'm hearing the same thing I learned from Fullmetal Alchemist: it had a lady author, Arakawa Hiromu, and women authors write differently than men authors. That's it! If I had to try and put it to words, I've found that women authors have a kind of gentleness in their stories, and it's like they don't even have to try hard to write characters. Granted, my sample size is Le Guin, Arakawa, and Lois McMasters Bujold (Miles Vorkosigan sci-fi novels), and maybe Rowling...Jane Austen too, now that I think of it, when I was reading the text wall at the 22:00 minute mark. [Edit: we have Twilight and trashy romance novels that contaminate the sample size, so I want to say 'the high-caliber women authors' show the above similarities.]

I *adore* the Earthsea (first) trilogy + _Tehanu._ Book four is where I stopped; as the video says, that seemed like the end. But now I've been persuaded to at least read _The Other Wind._ I think people who were upset by Ged's loss of power in _Tehanu_ were not paying attention to what Le Guin was telling them all along in the first trilogy. Ged is not the main character of a power fantasy. If he's an aspirational figure at all, it's not for fantasy reasons but reality reasons. He struggles, stumbles, fails, and grows up―not as a wizard but as a human being. His status as archmage in book three is symbolic (in Jungian or mythological fashion, if you like) of a man in the prime of his life, at the height of his physical and social power. Then he grows into old age. His powers decline, but they're replaced by other powers. It's natural and not undesirable. Last note: Part of the difficulty of adapting Earthsea to visual media may be that Le Guin often "violates" the truism "Show, Don't Tell". Actually, telling is sometimes the best way to convey information. Sorry if that comes as a surprise to anyone. (This is possibly why the first four books of Earthsea pack more punch into fewer pages than some single entries in some long-winded writers' series.)

The Tombs of Atuan was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Amazing job on the video, didn't even know about the Ghibli film!

Earthsea os one of my favourite fantasy series, so cool to see you do a video on it! I had no idea they did a radio series on it, hope it gets adapted properly one day...

Great video, only read the first 4 books so far but I'm excited to read the last 2. Love Usula K. LeGuin's writting so much.

I was literally just telling my friend about earth sea now I’m gonna send this to her

I tried to like the Ghibli film but the story was hard to try to feel invested in. I was more interested in the landscaping. Movie felt more like a pretty postcard

The thing if treu name is a very interesting topos, used both by Le Guin and Paolini, much time before LeGuin used, so I do not thing Paolini copy the writress, at last not in this case;) Beautiful video;)

_"This was way, way, way ahead of its time."_ 4:05 This 1968 book is definitely innovative in a lot of ways, but sci-fi had been for decades engaging with themes of race and challenging racial tropes. Even *Starship Troopers* from the 1950s challenged racial ideas of the time.

Ursula K. Le Guin inspired readers to watch out for our mistakes, the consequences, and the price of wisdom (surviving the repercussions, being at odds with former mindsets AND companions). For supposed YA aka coming of age that is A LOT of maturity in compressed form, and without the weaponized therapy-talk or woke BS of nowadays.

Talk about Earthsea? Subscribed.

Literally Earthsea and Conan are my biggest writing influences regarding fantasy. I would say after that lord of the rings and game of thrones comes next, regarding western fantasy.

Dang. You just reminded me I haven't started on that book. Once again sleeping on excellence I intended to learn from

If you want suggestions, you've come to the right place. Unlike most here (I would guess), I haven't hopped on the bandwagon for most of the popular new or current writers (like Sanderson or Martin). I'm kinda picky, and shy away from most sci-fi (but I like Star Wars of course, go figure). So here is my short list of authors that need a revival. Lloyd Alexander (with a bullet) he wrote for kids and older kids, but I loved pretty much everything. His big splash in fantasy was all about Welsh mythology, The Chronicles of Pyridan, featuring the adventures of Taran, Assistant Pig Keeper. One single adaptation, the Black Cauldron, one of Disney's flops, when they could put out good work, but marketing had no idea how to market (it failed at the same time frame as Treasure Planet and now having watched both, it's like how??). PS - special shout out to his three book series West Mark - Star Wars in a medieval setting, but pretty deep - rebelling is easy, but winning is hard and hardest of all is keeping the win and your soul while doing it. Julian May - when this author shot to the top, there was nothing like it. The prehistoric past on earth, invaded by ancient elves, at the same time the current timeline aliens have come to invite us to join the rest of the galaxy, at the same time that we in the current day discover that we can go back to prehistory so that the people who can't put up with the brave new world can go back and live out their lives without suicide or messing up the timeline... The series regarding this Many Colored Land ends and we never hear from the author again. Elizabeth Scarborough - wonderful fantasy and a very fun world starting with The Unicorn Creed, and our Maggie, the village witch, and the rest of the series expands to include her entire extended family. Nancy Springer - another genius storyteller who loves to tell us of a place called Isle, and how some of their folk are descended from elves and goddesses and how mad gods and invaders came among them...yes, we've seen this before, but it doesn't feel derivative or rehashed. Barbara Cooper - she's done a lot, but most famous series is a what if Arthurian cycle of young Bran, heir to Arthur in the modern day- of the five, I Stan the middle book "Green witch". IIRC she was also the creator of the High Derynie series, and both Ursula LeGuin and I think that series was a little under baked - LeGuin's takedown of this Cooper series was part of her famous essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", a must read for any fan or would be author of fantasy. Anne McCaffrey - prolific author of both science fiction (eg The Ship Who Sang) and her fantasy - sci-fi hybrid the Dragonriders of Pern series. I especially like and recommend the side series 'for kids' the Harper Hall trilogy... Dragons and their mini ancestors the fire lizards and a girl named Mennolly who can sing and play music and who imprinted (called Impression in world) nine singing fire lizards. Why much lesser stuff gets the adaptations and this gets passed over? Beats the heck out of me. There's more, but these are the authors the uppermost in my mind.

I had no idea Ursula had written fantasy books :o

I haven't read the Earthsea Saga but I really want to. I love dragons and stories with dragons in them

First three are wonderful but I gave up on book four. Hopefully you’ll inspire me to go back to it.

Anything to recommend just goes straight on my audiobook que- LOVE your videos dude-!!!

That's a Rebecca Guay painting as the thumbnail isn't it

Sounds like the Starseige of books

The dig at Paolini wasn't necessary. I've been rereading the Inheritance Cycle for the first time as an adult and I will die defending this series. The first book can be a little derivative but it also has some wonderfully original aspects and each subsequent book mostly only improves. It's a very boilerplate hero's journey but it's certainly not a Star Wars ripoff, like some people try to argue, and I've never found any merit in the plagiarism accusations. Also, Paolini was only 15 when he started writing Eragon and 17 when it was published so I tend to be a little easier on that book despite enjoying the other 3 far more. I love Le Guin as well but she doesn't have a monopoly on language/true name-based magic. That would be like saying every wise old mentor who tragically dies is a shameless ripoff of Obi-Wan Kenobi or every series with dragonriders is stealing from Anne McCaffrey.

And to me, the biggest fail of Earthsea is once again, the entire world is freaking White, with Ged just lightly weathered and tanned. I guess I have a beef with anime in general, since as half Chinese born in 1961, I have spent a good portion of my life watching tv, especially cartoons, and let me tell you, without the backgrounds that show Japanese lettering and clothing and food (and even that isn't consistent), you'd never know that any of the people were Asian! I also realize that a lot of the product (especially in the infancy of Japanese animation) was designed to have Western appeal (like 'tourist' jade and porcelain, meant for export), but it has always driven me a little crazy, that nobody ever looked like Papa and me. Or at least it did until I spoke to some American anime fans, who mentioned that the eyes are not 'slanted' because the Japanese themselves don't see their eyes as anything different, in addition to making the work exaggerated and cartoony, not exactly life like. But for a people that have to know that it's not a good look to be utterly erased, to just go ahead and ignore the basics? That is cold, stone cold disrespectful.

391st like!👍 Awesome video!🤘 Should check out this series!😁 Subscribed!😎

It's an ok series and Ged is the only character that I liked. Shirking common tropes and having each book being so different hurts it more than helps.

Dang man, definitely put some heavy undertones of progressive social belief being “good” in this one.