Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction. Such is the case when it comes to the 40-odd year run of East Germany, or as it was officially known, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), or GDR. From its unplanned founding through to a sudden reunification, East Germany seems to defy expectations and take its own turns through the pages of history. So much is laid out in 2023’s Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany by German-British Historian Katja Hoyer. Chock full of interview notes and commentary on the eastern zeitgeist, Hoyer’s work blends the personal and the collective histories of the erstwhile socialist state she was born in. Now, three-and-a-half decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we get a detailed, thoughtful, and surprisingly personal account of a nation that was always so much more than the frontline of the Cold War.

I stumbled upon this book thanks to a friend and fellow reader with an interest in Germany. Having been on a fantasy and adventure fiction kick for the last few years, Beyond the Wall seemed like an interesting change of pace, no less for the fact that I had spent five years in Berlin, and was very familiar with many of the neighborhoods and streets mentioned in the book. In the post-Post Cold War Era, it may seem quaint to read through a history of a state that hasn’t existed since before I was born, but I was instantly hooked, drawn into the vibrant world that was always more colorful than it seemed to western eyes.

From the beginning, the east german state was an enigma. Whether due to a lack of proper education on the topic or self-imposed ignorance, I was surprised by how the GDR even came to exist. Far from the soviet bulwark I’d assumed as its Raison d'être, the socialist german state was brought about in spite of Stalin’s desire to see Germany united (and forcibly demilitarized). From there, the twists and turns ran deeper, events and policy driven by a blend of bureaucracy and personality that was equally capable of societal good as it was brutal oppression. At the top level, Hoyer gives us facts and figures, connecting the dots between the movers and shakers of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and the often meandering direction the GDR followed.

Tying it together are the personal anecdotes, interviews, and recollections of former east germans, many of them everyday people far from the machinery of state and policy. Throughout the book, we are given more than just snapshots of moments in history; Hoyer endeavors to render a clearer picture of life in the East for both common and uncommon GDR citizens. Perhaps most striking, is how the memories and priorities and the average east german are so different from that of contemporary power brokers on both sides of the wall. This theme of showing the GDR was more than the wall, more than a repressive, controlled society is prevalent throughout the book.

This is most likely the reason for the backlash of negative press that Beyond the Wall continues to receive in Germany itself. Discussed in its opening pages, there is a sense of minimizing, or marginalizing the very fact of the GDR’s existence within reunified Germany today. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (who was born and raised in East Germany) features in the book’s opening chapter, and discusses the feelings of east german identity and concerns being brushed aside in the wake of reunification. That this continues to this day may account for some of the controversy, as well as the startling extremism many in the former east seem to be embracing.

It is worth noting that Beyond the Wall received a much more positive reception outside of Germany, lauded internationally for its deconstruction of the GDR’s mythical legacy as a bleak, colorless land of concrete. All in all, Beyond the Wall is a fascinating, true-to-its title account of the life and history of a vanished nation, told with passion and care. I recommend it to anyone interested in modern German history, and more broadly to the curious student in all of us, who can find insight for our present world in the strangest of places.

I have a confession to make. Despite the old saying, I frequently judge (or at least make impulse decisions to buy) books by their cover. But hey, sometimes it all works out – very much so in the case of The Spellshop, the new cozy romantasy novel by Sarah Beth Durst. Sporting a colorful cast of characters just as delightful as the cover art and lavender colored edges, the book takes us on a journey of self-discovery, of finding family and community, and how we all ultimately need to look out for each other.

There’s a lot to like in this book, and I’ll be diving into as much as I can squeeze into a short review. I’ll also go over the things that didn’t click with me, and aspects of the book that made the reading drag in some parts; as always, your mileage may vary. So then, without further ado, let’s tie our boats off at the doc, and hike up the trail to Kiela and Caz’s Jam (and Spell) Shop!

Warning: ***Minor Spoilers Ahead***

Opening on a city engulfed in the flames of a bloody revolution, introverted librarian Kiela and her assistant Caz (a sentient spider plant), make a last-minute escape from the great library, heading out to sea in a dinghy laden with crates of carefully cataloged spell books. With nowhere else to go, Kiela settles on dropping anchor at the remote island of Caltrey, the place she was born, raised, and never expected to return after her parents sought out a better life in the capital city of Alyssium.

After she arrives, Kiela tries to keep completely unnoticed, hoping the islanders never suspect that anyone, let alone a former Caltreyan, has moved back into her parent’s abandoned, vine-choked cottage outside the island’s village. We quickly learn that she’s not just trying to avoid people out of her own preferences, though. It turns out, by leaving with a number of valuable and highly controlled texts of magic, Kiela and Caz have broken some very stringent imperial laws – assuming the empire still exists, but Kiela’s not about to head back and find out – and the penalty for doing so would be death, at best. Nevertheless, they don’t remain unknown for too long.

The Spellshop takes it very slow once Kiela and Caz arrive on the island, sometimes a bit too slow. There’s a lot of introspection, awkward flailing into social situations that she’d rather avoid, and a strong sense of wistfulness that pervades the first half of the book. Exploring the island, Kiela recognizes places and recalls flashes of her adolescence on a Caltrey that looked different to the one she now sees – signs of disrepair, plants withering, and sudden, violent storms that occur more and more frequently. Durst does a really clever job here in paralleling real-world climate change in The Spellshop, turning fantasy escapism on its head and creating a sense of familiarity in a world full of talking plants, centaurs, and merhorse-herders.

As we follow Kiela and Caz along, we start to learn more about the world they inhabit, and through all of the friends she (hesitantly at first) makes along the way, the strong sense of community the islanders share. We see selflessness and kindness win out over fear and greed, and Kiela slowly comes out of her shell as she discovers that she does need people in her life – especially those who want to be in it.

Family isn’t always the people you’re related to.

- Larran

While the book absolutely won me over in the end, I did struggle with it at times. The slow-burning hallmark movie-style romance, coupled with Kiela’s near-pathological self-esteem issues dragged the story out several chapters more than felt necessary. Early parts of the novel also suffer from an overabundance of telling instead of showing, with Kiela’s inner monologue giving the audience a firehose of exposition about her world. In fairness, it’s very clear that our blue-haired heroine is several flavors of neurodivergent, so my distaste for this could be colored by my own self-consciousness.

Things pick up as we move forward, as plot elements intertwine and twist in unexpected ways. Tension, deception, and close calls keep Kiela, and those around her on their toes. Enemies, friends, and lovers all collide in a spectacular finish that cruises back into the cozy fantasy genre just in time. It’s a wilder ride than I expected from the cover, but perhaps that’s the intent behind the old wisdom after all.

At its core, The Spellshop teaches us that, no matter who we are, or where we come from, we are all part of some community or another. While its cozy, cottagecore aesthetic is sure to appeal to the tired, jaded cityfolk among us, the book emphasizes the importance of finding community AND family wherever you are. And in today’s world of rising costs of living, fear, uncertainty, and isolation, that’s a powerful message.

Okay, strap yourselves in. In this review, we’re journeying Into the Woods, deep under the dark canopies where strange things sleep, and ancient entities watch for errant travelers. It is a dangerous path, and we are likely to be changed before we reach the other side, if we reach it at all!

Just kidding, we’re reviewing Uprooted, the Dark Fantasy novel by author Naomi Novik. Although, you could be forgiven for mixing those two up, with how lengthy and oftentimes meandering the story flows. As per usual, a big old SPOILER WARNING for those of you who haven’t read the book – go no further! Or, read on if you like; I’m not your mom.

Also, a brief Content Warning: Body Horror, mentions of rape and violence.

Allright, let’s get right into things: I found this book….frustrating. There are a load of good things in here, elements that I enjoyed, and some genuinely creative descriptions that really stuck in my head. But, there were some MASSIVE problems for me, which really soured the reading experience. First up…

The Story

The story begins as a slow burn, described in a first-person narrative by our heroine Agnieszka, a pastoral teenager living in a valley on the edge of the medieval fantasy kingdom to which she belongs. The people of her village live constantly under the threat of the nearby wood, which is evidently a nightmare factory of giant insects and beasts, fast-growing evil trees, and a nameless malevolence that can infect people with a contagious madness. Their defense against this ever-present, body-horror carnival? One grumpy magic boy, living in a tower at the edge of the valley.

The local lord, a wizard that is known to the villagers simply as “The Dragon”, is spoken of with almost as much hugh and fear as the wood, and we learn the reason for this almost immediately. Disdaining to spend any more than the bare minimum of time outside his tower, so little is known about their wizard, except for his demand for very specific tribute. Every ten years, he chooses a village girl from those born in another, specific year, and forces them to come with him to his tower.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking already – classic fairy tail dragon disguised as a wizard, OR creepy, semi-immortal old man using his lordship for unsavory purposes, right?

Wrong, but we’ll get there later.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, Agnieszka is one of those “dragon-born” village girls. All of the girls who are potentially going to be chosen live in a sort of limbo their entire lives, their parents and peers slowly ‘mourning’ them, in a manner, and keeping them at arm’s length. This is messed up, for a number of reasons, but hey, it’s a dark fairy tale. At any rate, Agnieszka (that’s tough to keep typing, so I’m going to call her “Angie”) is pretty certain she won’t be chosen, as is the rest of her village. The reason for this is the existence of her childhood bestie, Kasia. Kasia is everything Angie is not: Tall, beautiful, clean and neat, possessing many practical skills, etc etc – while Agnieszka’s main claim to fame is that she can dirty her clothes at record speed, and find edible berries and mushrooms in the forest whenever she goes looking (hey, that is pretty useful, come to think of it…)

So when the Dragon (who it turns out is very young and handsome, with apparently only some crow’s feet to indicate his advanced age) shows up at the ceremony and picks Angieszka, the bottom falls out of everyone’s world.

From here, the story starts percolating into a “magician’s apprentice” montage, with a number of stumbling blocks along the way as Angie, lacking any context or explanations whatsoever, misunderstands his intentions and instructions; while the wizard (Sarkan, we later learn is his name), remains startlingly oblivious to how intimidating, and then rude he comes across. Slowly, verrrry slooowly, the story picks up steam, and we get some genuinely good odd-couple moments with the two of them doing magic together. Angie has a more intuitive way of casting spells to Sarkan’s rigid, methodical approach, and this enrages him at first, and confuses him later.

The story goes on from there, giving us glimpses of the wider world, the country Angie lives in, small hints (in hindsight) about the true nature of the wood, and a parade of not particularly likable characters. We meet a gallant prince (who makes the leap to attempted rapist in the span of two pages), a conniving court-wizard, and eventually, an entire royal palace’s worth of insufferable nobles. Angie goes into the woods a number of times (and at least once under duress) to save people taken by it, and narrowly escapes each time. She visits the royal city, and unwillingly briefly tries to play politics. She discovers that the corruption of the wood is somehow present in the castle as well, and before she can stop it, most of the named characters in the city are dead or dead-set on killing her, and she’s running for her life with Kasia and two surviving royal children back towards the valley…it all gets very messy from here.

By the end of the book, I was just READY for it to be done. The story seemed to drag on for an incredibly long time. There was a lot to read, at 435 pages, and to be honest, the book probably should have been a third or more shorter. A big part of this was…

The Pacing

Uprooted seemed all over the place. After setting the initial scene, it inched by, giving us only glimpses of what was to come as Angie started learning magic and proving herself in key moments. But then, The Palace Chapters…..

Everything starts going full-throttle in the second half of the book. Within the span of a chapter or two, the body count starts piling higher than the canopy of a heart tree, and it doesn’t stop until the end. Tension is important in storytelling, and ramping it up as the tale goes on is standard practice, but the stakes went through the roof far too quickly, and there never seemed to be much time for either us or the characters to catch a breather. I suspect a lot of this had to do with how oppressively powerful the evil forest was – and how it always seemed to be several steps ahead of everyone else, no matter what.

I’m sure this wasn’t intentional, but it felt like every time Angie (with or without help) pulled off some miraculous accomplishment – the wood had three contingency plans that the characters eventually stumble upon that undoes everything. As an example, the big turning point in the novel involved rescuing the kingdom’s Queen from the wood, after being trapped there for a whopping twenty years – she’s got to be compost at this point, right? And yet, when Angie, Sarkan and company brave the woods to actually find her, they manage it! What’s more, they somehow purge the corruption, leaving the Queen in a sort of magical fugue state (hey, spending two decades as mulch will do that to ya). So it’s clear there’s something still wrong with her, but the book beats us over the head with repeated demonstrations that the specific corruption of the wood is GONE.

Aaaaand then about five chapters and hundreds of bodies later, we get this gem:

“My face ached as if she’d struck me, with a sharp hollow pressure above the bridge of my nose, familiar. ‘The Wood’, I said out loud.

‘What?’ Sarkan said.

‘The Wood,’ I said. ‘The Wood is in her.’ Every spell we’d cast, every purging, the holy relics, every trial: none of them mattered. I was suddenly sure. That had been the Wood looking back at me. The Wood had found a way to hide.”

If Uprooted were a game, this is the point where I would have flipped the table and walked away. I almost closed the book then and there, but it was so close to the end that I pushed on. In the end, the heroes actually cannot defeat the wood by fighting it, and…I guess that was the point?

Instead, Angie gets tossed into a heart tree, and gets a thesaurus-sized lore dump on the history of the wood. She learns that there was once an entire race of immortal tree-people living peacefully in the woods. The tree-people and a previous kingdom of humans once lived together in (relative) harmony, and that one of the tree-people had married the human king. However, the humans grew scared of the tree-people, and the king’s son (presumably from a previous marriage) had the tree-queen sealed up inside her husband’s tomb. So, naturally, she broke out, rejoined her people, and lived happily ever after…

Just kidding, the tree-people decided to all go into permanent hibernation and become full-trees, and the tree-queen arrived too late, and too full of hatred to join them. She swore eternal vengeance on mankind and, boom, evil woods.

Angie learns all of this, finds her way out of the heart tree, and Power of Love’s her way to a happy-ish ending for everyone – yay! The entire experience felt jarring, and left me exhausted. But the thing that really made it hard to enjoy this book was…

The Characters

I could count the number of people I cared about in this story on one hand. So many of the people we are introduced to either die before we learn anything of consequence about them, or turn out to be total jerkwads. Outside of Angie and Kasia, you’ve got:

• Jerkwad the Magnificent, caster of spells and shade
• The Evil Faceless Forest that just needs a hug
• Prince Rapey mcBadDecisions
• Pe’nis En’vious, the realm’s second-best Wizard
• Badass Blacksmithing Witch, who spent a century forging a sword to kill the wood (it doesn’t work)
• Other Prince(™), killed off-screen a few pages after his only lines

And a litany of minor characters that don’t really get much time to develop in any interesting way. In the end, there was a good story in here somewhere, but it was buried deep under (mostly) bland or unlikeable characters, twists that undermined notable moments, and a tendency to tell when it should have shown. Uprooted does a few things right, and there’s a devious creativity in this earlier work of Novik’s that I recognize from her more recent Scholomance series. But I’m just glad to be out of the woods, and I don’t think I’ll be going back.

Oh boy. I've got to be honest with you all, I had a hard time finishing this book...

Because I REALLY didn't want it to end! Despite only clocking in at 350-ish pages, I took about a week to get through it, really trying to savor every chapter. Much like the POV character Viv, my enjoyment, immersion, and connection to the charming cast of characters in the novel grew, almost by the page. Bookshops & Bonedust is set twenty years before the events of Baldree's breakout novel Legends & Lattes, back when Viv the retired adventurer-for-hire was only just hitting her stride in the monster and baddie hunting business. Obligatory warning that there be SPOILERS AHEAD, so stop now if you haven't read the book yet!

If Legends & Lattes made me want to curl up with a hot coffee in a plush cafe booth, Bookshops & Bonedust has me reaching for a well-worn book off a tall shelf, and curling back up to read. Twenty years before Orc mercenary Viv settled down in the city of Thune to open a curious and comfy shop serving piping hot cups of a novel bevererage called Coffee, she was injured while running with a famed mercenary group and left behind to heal in the sleepy seaside town of Murk. The early chapters are a bit of slow burn, with Viv exploring the town, meeting many of the denizens we will soon come to love, and awkwardly attuning to the lifestyle of someone who doesn't swing a sword for a living while she awaits both her leg mending and the return of her mercenary outfit.

The real magic of the book becomes apparent as we are shown, through the same videogame-style series of introductions to the main characters, new sides of Viv that are somehow perfectly fitting to the gruff and loveable Orc that we met back in Legends. Desperate for something to do, Viv wanders into a dusty and dingy boardwalk bookshop, leading her to meet the proprietor, a foul-mouthed ratkin (mouse-person) named Fern, and her pet Gryphet (a novel take on the mythical Griffin/Gryphon, featuring an owl's head and a pug's body) the adorably named Potroast.

Sidebar here, I LOVE this little fuzz & fur ball. Seriously, just look at the official art for this guy.

Fern is also loveable in the same way that other characters in Legends draw you in: she's headstrong, in over her head (in this case, the bookshop is on the brink of going out of business), and an earnest lover of books. While Viv might be the protagonist of the story, Fern is its heart. The titular Bookshop itstelf, Thistleburr, turns out to be the stage for much of the novel's progression, and serves as a physical focal point from there on out.

The formula is recognizeable from Legends & Lattes: Viv eventually makes a deal with Fern to help out around the shop in exchange for free reads and reccomendations (Fern's Idea), and over the course of the story we see Thistleburr transformed from dark, dusty, and uninviting to fresh, clean, welcoming, and downright comfy. Fern herself gains confidence as business starts to take off, and even invents (in this world at least) new trends in bookselling, such as author signings and mystery book-bag sales. What's amazing about all of this is while it's more or less the exact same videogame story progression approach in Baldree's last novel, he manages to make it feel fresh at the same time. The cast of characters, aside from Viv and Fern (and of course Potroast!) are vibrant and lively: The sapphic dwarven love-interest Maylee, the imposing serpentfolk Gatewarden (chief of police) Iridia, and quirky gnomish future co-adventurer and pointy object enthusiast Gallina, among many others.

Trouble certainly isn't far away, as the town of Murk soon comes to realize. Against the backdrop of cozy bookshops and fresh baked sweetbreads, a suspicious man in gray is spotted by Viv, who reminds her most unpleasantly of the feared Necromancer that her mercenary band was hunting when she was first injured. I could dive a little deeper into the story from there, but trust me when I say, just go read it; every page will be worth your while.

At the end of the day, Bookshops & Bonedust is a story about finding ourselves, sometimes through circumstances we would not have chosen, and through people we would not have met otherwise. And sometimes, we aren't the people we're meant to be just yet when it happens, and that is part of the beauty of life. It's heartwarming, bittersweet, and cozy all at once, and somehow feels as fresh as a newly printed page, and yet also timeless as a dusty old paperback.

A wonderful tale, start to finish, you can find Bookshops & Bonedust at your local bookstore -- just ask the person behind the counter for a cozy reccomendation.

A recently released title by noted historian and Boston College Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson, Democracy Awakening takes us on a long journey backwards and forwards in the ~250 years of the United States experiment in democratic self-governance. Clocking in at just over 300 pages, it's incredible just how much discussion, detail, and historical context Richardson manages to pack into a compelling narrative rollercoaster of our times.

Part 1 (the first third) of the book takes us on a journey from the Great Depression of the 1930's and the subsequent New Deal era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, right up to the historic election and two-term presidency of Barack Obama. Despite this section being bookended with Democratic presidents, it is the Republican party that Richardson shines the spotlight on, as she details the party's embrace of the earlier era's white supremacist southern Democracts, and their gradual takeover of the party. Many key events and people are detailed as we fly through the years: The attack on WWII veteran Isaac Woodard and the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, the establishment of the 'Liberal Consensus' of the post-WWII years, The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, Nixon's Southern Strategy, The Reagan Revolution, the fall of the USSR, The Bush years and Neoconservatism, and finally, the Republican obstructionism of the Obama years.

The second section of the book covers the election of Donald Trump and the crystalization of the Republican Party and American Conservatism into an openly facistic, white-supremacist embracing movment. Diving into much more detail of the four years (that certainly felt like a decade at least), Richardson documents key events in the Trump presidency that swung the cultural conversation, shattered preestablished norms, and nearly resulted in the overthrow of American democracy.

I will note it may be difficult to read through this bit, given how fresh the end of the Trump presidency still feels, but Richardson does a good job laying out the details in her signature calm yet compelling style -- it's like if NPR partnered with HBO -- and the result is a fascinating read. Of course, I still had to pause at the bit detailing the insurrection of January 6th, 2021 -- quite apart from the shocking acts of depravity and disregard for our nation's democratic system, I'm still angry that a bunch of facist idiots are now associated with my birthday.

*AHEM* anyway...

The final part of Democracy Awakening treads historical ground once again, tying many moments and key figures (including Lincoln and the Founding Fathers) into the narratives of today. Drawing on a continuous line, Riachardson lays out the defining moments in American History, when those fighting for equal rights and protection under the law called upon the USA to fufill the promises of the Declaration of Independence. The book ends on a discussion of current events, and notes that is is up to us to decide and act to write the future -- stating quite clearly, that we are in one of these defining moments once again.

Perhaps it's my LOTR-obsession brain drawing parallels, but I can't help but be reminded by this of a certain bit of wisdom dropped by an old man in a pointy hat...

The takeaway that in the end we are all responsible (not at fault, but responsible) for the future direction of America, is a powerful notion. The promise of the the USA, that the people of a nation have a right to choose their government, was a radical notion when it was proposed -- and despite the lip service it is now paid, has never been a certain thing. However imperfectly the United States has lived up to that promise, it is the standing firm of those who champion the rights of all that has pushed us forward in the past -- and so must it be once more.

Detailed, sourced, and explained in a refreshingly factual manner, Richardson's narrative lays out the descent of the Republican party from a legitimate participant in democracy to its state today, the undercurrent, ebb and flow of social progress of the past 100 years, and how it is all sown into the very fabric of the United States, down to the beginning. A thorough and compelling read from the author of the acclaimed newsletter Letters from an American.

At the time of writing, Democracy Awakening sits at #8 on the New York Times Bestseller list for Nonfiction -- congrats Professor Richardson! A worthwhile read for anyone yearning for a levelheaded and contextualized understanding of the times we are living through in America.

WARNING: There be spoilers ahead! Don't read any further if you'd rather not know the plot!

A Wizard of Earthsea is the first of the series of epic children’s (teenager’s, YA even?) fantasy, set in the water world known, aptly enough, as “Earthsea.” I’ve always considered timelessness to be a mark of good fantasy – and Earthsea is no exception. I have to be honest, when I first picked a new hardcover of this book, I had no idea it was such an early entry in the fantasy genre. Only once I finished it and began pondering this review did I look up the publication date – nearly spitting out my coffee – to note that this book came out IN FREAKIN 1968. 

Wow, okay, I’m good.

Perhaps I’m not as well versed in fantasy outside of my comfy hobbit-hole-sized bubble of Tolkein fandom and dark academia, but I was really surprised that a book with such a novel approach to the genre wasn’t a more recent creation. Anyway, I should really get on with talking about, you know, the actual story.

This is a tale of the boy known as Sparrowhawk, who would one day become one of the greatest wizards in all of Earthsea. In fact, the author, in true fairy-tale fashion, tells us as much right up front, along with a brief description of his homeland:

“The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. From the towns in its high valleys and the ports on its dark narrow bays many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard or mage, or, looking for adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle of all Earthsea. Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage. His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.”

And from there, we’re off to the races, from the early life story of the boy. He grows up in a provincial village, and given the name Duny – no wonder he later went with “Sparrowhawk” – and he soon finds that he has a talent for magic.

Magic, in the world of Earthsea, takes a very interesting form. In many ways it fits the classical, tolkein-esque soft magic system that operates at a level never explained to the reader, nor fully understood by the characters. But while many of the mechanisms of magic are left to the imagination, there is still a fair bit explained at the surface level. Magic is something one can learn and study, and (in most places at least) the profession of wizardry is considered honorable. There’s apparently some debate about where Earthsea fits into the Sandersonian scale of Hard/Soft magic, but given how old this first entry is, I’m not shocked it doesn’t fit neatly in a modern category.

But back to Ge- oops, I mean Sparrowhawk. Forget I said that, okay?

After learning the basics of magic from the local village witch (who happens to be his Aunt), Sparrowhawk proves he has a talent for magic by saving his entire village from a horde of invading barbarians – as you do. How does the young lad pull this off, you ask? Why, by covering his entire village in fog he can manipulate into shapes and specters to scare the breeches off the invaders, enabling the villages to drive them off.

This gets him noticed by the most powerful wizard on the island, who takes him on as an apprentice, teaching the boy the ropes and eventually granting him his true name. You see, in the world of Earthsea, a person, like all things in the world living or inert, has a true name to which their very being is tied. For people, these names are given by wizards when they come of age (more or less at puberty). This name is seldom used, as knowing it gives someone (especially wizards) power over you. This is explained a bit more thoroughly in Le Guin’s short story The Rule of Names, but suffice it to say that a person keeps that name to themselves, and goes by a nickname most of the time, like “Sparrowhawk”

The boy, whose true name we learn is Ged, has a brush with the darker side of magic when he is tricked into nearly releasing some unspeakable shadowy horror that was written about in one of his master Ogion’s spellbooks. Despite this, he is still impatient and chafes at the pace and confines of his lessons. Ogion gives him a choice to continue his studies with him, or to attend the prestigious wizard academy on the faraway island of Roke. You can probably guess which he chooses.

And so begins the globetrotting adventures of Sparrowhawk. Things may get a bit hard to follow without a map, but thankfully, there’s a handy set of them on the author’s website. Okay, onward to ADVENTURE!

First, our boy makes it to Roke, where he quickly makes exactly 1 best friend, and one hated rival. The twist is, of course, that those two are friends themselves. His rival, Jasper, seems friendly enough on the surface, but gives off some snobbish vibes, which the rustic-born Ged immediately takes personally. His best friend Vetch, on the other hand, has a much more laid-back attitude, and seems to want nothing more than to eat snacks and vibe – very relatable.

One day, the rivalry comes to a head, and Ged ends up releasing the same horrifying shadow creature from before, while trying to one-up Jasper. The thing, the nature of which is never fully explained, immediately lunges at Ged and starts trying to claw his face off – did I mention this was written as a children’s book? The heroic efforts of the Archmage of the school drive the creature away, but at the cost of his life.

A Wizard of Earthsea then fully shifts gears into a redemption arc, with Ged recovering, completing his studies, and becoming a journeyman wizard, all the while trying to evade the shadow creature that ceaselessly hunts him. Along the way he bamboozles a dragon, binding it with his knowledge of its true name, escapes from the machinations of an eldritch power trapped in a stone, transforms into a hawk and nearly gets stuck (Earthsea animal transformations apparently operate on Animorphs rules), and seeks out his old mentor Ogion for advice on evading the shadow.

When the old wizard tells him he must face the shadow instead of fleeing it, he does just that, flipping the script and pursuing his tormentor across oceans and seas in a whirlwind tour of Earthsea. He runs into his old pal Vetch on his home island of Iffish, and together they set out to destroy the shadow once and for all. The end of the book takes us into even stranger territory, with the two friends traveling literally off the map, and setting up a final confrontation in an upside-down, World’s-End kind of place that appears to Vetch only as an endless sea, but to Ged as a beach he can walk across. There, he finds his shadow, in a twist, names it his own name, and merges with it to become whole…yeah, it was a little hard for me to follow too.

The overarching theme of Earthsea seems to be that violence is often not the answer, and with friends and resourcefulness, one can overcome any obstacle. There’s a fair bit of symbolism in the nature of the shadow, its connection to Ged, and the fate of characters that are shown to have darkness in their hearts. Overall, an enjoyable story and a different kind of fantasy that we still don’t see enough of, in my opinion.