The Farthest Shore

About The Farthest Shore

The third book of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle opens with a problem that is, in fantasy terms, genuinely alarming: magic is failing. Not dramatically, not all at once, but quietly — spells that used to hold are dissolving, wizards who spent decades mastering their craft are finding their skills unraveling, and no one can say exactly why. Ged, the Archmage, is old enough and experienced enough to recognize that the source of this failure must exist somewhere, and that someone will have to find it. He chooses Arren, a young prince from one of the lesser islands, to sail with him — not because Arren is powerful, which he isn't, but because Ged sees something in him that he doesn't yet see in himself. Their voyage takes them to the outermost edges of Earthsea, to places that don't appear on charts, to encounters with the dead and the almost-dead and the dying. Le Guin is writing here about the relationship between mortality and meaning — about what it costs to accept death, and what happens to a world when someone tries to refuse that acceptance. The villain of The Farthest Shore is not evil in a conventional sense; he has simply found a door that should not be opened and walked through it. The damage he's done is the damage that follows from one person's terror of ending. Arren's arc is the book's quiet heart. He begins the story as a capable, admirable young man who is completely unprepared for what this voyage will require of him — not physically, but emotionally. Le Guin puts him through experiences designed to break something, and then watches what he does with what's left. His relationship with Ged, which starts as discipleship and becomes something more complex, carries the narrative. The ending is earned and genuinely moving. The Farthest Shore is the most philosophically ambitious book in the Earthsea Cycle up to its publication, and it holds up. For readers who have come through A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, it functions as the completion of something — though the Cycle continues and deepens further in Tehanu.

Tropes & Themes