Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Earthsea, Volume Two : Tehanu / Tales from Earthsea / The Other Wind / Stories

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels and stories are set in the far-flung archipelago of Earthsea. The original three novels in the 1960s and 70s were the first and most successful of the descendants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and were the progenitors, in their turn, of all the wizard school and dragonlord fantasy series that have come since. But then Le Guin turned to Earthsea again, 18 years later, writing three more books that made Earthsea a far stranger and more compelling work still. These later works are gathered here in the second volume in the Library of America's edition of the Complete Earthsea: Tehanu (1990), in which the widowed Tenar adopts a badly burned and abandoned child, a girl she names Tehanu. When Ged returns to Gont after losing his magic, Tenar helps him learn to live on the edge of things, even while an evil mage threatens their new life. Tales from Earthsea (2001) both reaches back in time to explore the beginnings of the school for mages on Roke and of Ged’s teacher Ogion, and, in “Dragonfly,” introduces Irian, a woman who realizes that she is other than what she seems. The Other Wind (2001), in which Irian meets Tehanu after Alder, a village sorcerer, travels in search of Ged to find out why he dreams every night that the stone wall that divides Earthsea from the Dry Land of death is crumbling. The answer turns out to have to do with Tehanu, Irian, and the people like them—and with the origin of magic in Earthsea.