Dragonfly by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The world of Earthsea is full of wizards, sorcerers, sorceresses, and witches but magic seems to be unbalanced due to the actions of the archmage and the new king. However the main character and focus of the plot is the titular Dragonfly, true name Irian, with major secondary characters being two wizards that interact with her. Dragonfly/Irian goes to the Isle of Roke to the school of the wizards to learn what she needs to learn, even though she's a woman (a major taboo). She arrives at both an uncertain time for the wizards and causes both division and introspection among the Council of Nine.
Although Robert Silverberg's overview of the series is the basis' of the stories introduction, the major fault of the story is that the individual reader needs to have read the series or at least the last Earthsea book published before this short story to know some the backgrounds of the wizards Dragonfly/Irian interact with. However, despite that Le Guin's writing helps compensate for that one difficulty for a very good read.
No comments:
Post a Comment