Quote:
Originally Posted by astra_lestat
Thanks for a tip.
I think I will go through book 1 and book 2. If I don't like them I stop.
I have not read any HP books yet but I have seen movies and reading A Wizard of Earthsea feels like a the first HP movie was based on this book  Small buy, no parents, natural talents, goes to far away school to learn magic, rivals in school...I think Rowling is a big fan of Earthsea |
It's a pretty common theme, really. Even more common if you're willing to include books about talented orphans going away to school that don't involve magic. For what it's worth, the Harry Potter books don't read like Le Guin (I think they read more smoothly, actually).
The plot of
A Wizard of Earthsea takes a sharp turn from any of the HP books about halfway through. Again, I think the first one may be the weakest. The plot and characterization of
The Tombs of Atuan are much stronger, and the idea behind
The Farthest Shore is... deep, for lack of a better word.
Yet, the books she wrote twenty years later in the same world are much more interesting, to my mind. At the time that Le Guin was writing the first Earthsea books, there were a lot of unconscious assumptions in fantasy (e.g. all wizards are male, but that's the simplest one). Its odd, because Le Guin was writing science fiction during the same period that challenged many assumptions and stereotypes. When Le Guin returned to Earthsea, two decades later, these assumptions apparently jumped out at her, and she found a way to write sequels without the same assumptions that somehow still worked -- they explained how things had gotten to be the way they were in the first books, and caused the reader (or me, at least) to go back and re-interpret what I thought I understood about the first books. I always like it when a writer can bring the reader to that kind of reinterpretation.