Critique: Tehanu (Earthsea Quartet #4) (Ursula Le Guin)

Goha takes care of a girl, whom she names Therru, whose face and head are charred to the bone. Goha is Tenar from book two and this one explores her life post-adventure. Very few stories do this. Yes, it’s less exciting than an adventure, but it’s still interesting to see how adventure and excitement changes people.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There were so many positives.

This book transitions between calling her Goha and Tenar. The change wasn’t sudden or dramatic, instead being done in a controlled manner. The point at which it became more noticeable was when Goha had gone back to Ogion. A mage, whose job relies on true names, calling Goha by her true name Tenar was a good, clear place to have the demarcation.

Ogion tells Tenar to wait, but not what for. Tenar agrees because she has nothing else to do and she thinks, ‘What else have I ever done?’ Clearly she feels like an observer in her own life. Tenar asks if she should sleep with Sparrowhawk and he says she’ll have to be patient. She says she’s been patient for twenty-five years. So maybe the all she’s ‘ever done’ was wait for Sparrowhawk to come back to her?

For his burial, Ogion is put on his side with his knees bent in the foetal position, something very typical in the burials in ancient history. As the author set Earthsea pre-medieval period, this was a very good detail.

The witch Moss said that the power of women was older than the Making that goes ‘back into the dark’. As in, the Nameless Ones? This could explain why the wizards have such a negative view of witchcraft, because they have a negative view of the Nameless Ones.

 

The Earthsea Quartet isn’t a comedy series. So when something funny does crop up, it’s instantly noticeable.

When someone says they should ‘keep the foreign riffraff out’, the prose follows on with, ‘Tenar nodded her foreign head pleasantly.’ This had me chuckling really hard.

When Tenar says Sparrowhawk hasn’t eaten all day, he responds by saying, ‘There was a man there.’ That made me laugh because people being present has made me avoid food before, too.

 

There were several concepts that made one pause for thought.

Tenar chose to become a housewife and a mother, the only position of authority women had. But Tenar notes that this authority was given/bestowed/allowed by men. So is that authority real or is it another form of control?

It says that Tenar didn’t understand Sparrowhawk’s ‘shame... A woman got used to shame.’ Women are shamed for what men are praised for. Yes, men are shamed, but only for what’s considered feminine, which inadvertently shames women because they do the feminine stuff. Meaning women are shamed for everything.

The Gontish people forgave her ‘foreignness’. At first, one might find it bizarre to forgive people for what they are rather than what they’ve done. But even today, people get mad over what people are (foreign, gay, black, woman). So despite being something I wanted to dismiss as stupid and illogical, it made me reflect on how stuid and illogical society can be.

Complaints weren’t ‘just the complaint each generation makes that things aren’t what they used to be and the world’s going to the dogs.’ Literally everyone ever complains about the younger generations. It’s nice to see the author, or in fact anyone, acknowledge this.

 

So yes, there were problems.

We don’t get the name of the burnt girl (Therru) for quite some time, even though she was physically present in the story. If there is a reason to keep important information hidden, that’s fine. But I couldn’t find the value in withholding the name in this instance.

It says that Ogion never touched her and yet in the same paragraph says when ‘she leaned against him, he’d stroke her hair.’ So Ogion clearly has touched her in the past.

One sentence is started with a lower-case letter: ‘always of yourself?’

There was a confusing three pages. The gist was that wizards bind themselves to be celibate in exchange for their magical power. But it lacked clarity. Ambiguity can be useful in storytelling but that’s different from poor writing. I wish these pages had been rewritten into something better.

It states that Tenar was the pupil of the mage, despite her saying she rejected that life. This contradiction was unnecessary.

Goha wraps Therru up, saying the blankets were like a cocoon that would hatch in the morning. ‘The ruined little butterfly.’ That’s rather harsh. One might say harshness is within Goha’s character, considering she wonders if she should have let Therru die. Goha was also harsh when she was the Priestess of the Nameless Ones. But the very reason for letting Therru die was that it would have been kinder than life. That’s not harshness but kindness. Considering the rest of Goha’s behaviour, it’s clear that harshness isn’t within Goha’s character.

 

Much of this book focuses on the relationship between dragons and humans. It’s a background theme that gets steadily more important to the plot. This development was managed well.

Goha tells Therru a story where a women could change into a dragon. She sings that dragons were once a single, winged race. Despite this split, some retained a human mind and a dragon heart.

There’s a fan that, with the aid of sunlight, depicts humans with dragon wings and dragons with human eyes. Remember, in book two it’s noted that dragons talk about the human Erreth-Akbe as if he were a dragon.

Therru’s scars are hot, like a ‘horny-skinned wild creature… escaping’. Hot, wild and hard-skinned like a dragon, maybe? A witch says Therru’s power is beyond the teaching of ‘any witch or wizard.’ There’s only one magical thing this fits with: dragons. When Therru chooses to stay with Tenar and Sparrowhawk, the dragon Kalessin says, “I give you my child.”

Therru knows Aspen’s true name. Knowing something’s true name is something a wizard trains to do yet Therru, a seven year-old without training, knows it. True names are in the Old Speech and, as noted in previous books, dragons are the Old Speech, so they’d know something’s true name.

So the ideas of humans and dragons once being one is very prevalent. Then there are loads of clues that Therru is an individual who is both.

 

A gentle story told well, this book was well-though out. After the disaster of book three, it was great that the follow-up book was brimming with positivity.

It shows how life can proceed in a normal fashion after epic adventures, even all the mundane aspects. It directly talks about the fundamental differences between male and female magic so that the readers know it’s a substantively different, rather than just discriminatory. The dragon-human link is fascinating.

I’m so glad I picked this quartet up off the shelf!

 

Critique: Rings of Power (TV)

*****SPOILERS*****

 

I neither loved nor loathed this series. It was an enjoyable, engrossing watch. Yet there were too many problems (black hobbits NOT being one of them). I will watch the future series because the positives outweigh the negatives. I just hope the creators pull themselves together.

 

From a mythological sense, a real-life sense, and a Tolkien sense, black hobbits make sense.

            Tolkien describes three groups of hobbits. Harfoots, he notes, were ‘browner of skin’ than other varieties. Considering the hobbits in the Ring of Power are Harfoots, having individuals with brown skin is definitely fitting.

            People complained that races in this series should have pale skin because it’s based on Scandinavia and Scandinavians have pale skin. True, Norse people are pale. But the region is co-inhabited by the native Sami, people who have darker skin tones. So if the Ring of Power is based on real life Scandinavia, and real life Scandinavia has different skin tones, then the Rings of Power would have different skin tones, too.

            Finally, Norse mythology has dark elves. These are individuals who have dark skin. Also, trolls and goblins were at times depicted with dark skin. So dark skinned individuals are in Norse mythology. If the Rings of Power is based on Norse mythology, and Norse mythology has dark skinned individuals, then the Rings of Power should have people with dark skin tones.

(Further, skin elves and dwarves are suggested to the same beings in Norse mythology. Dark people of short skin power have a place in Norse mythology and, hence, a place in the Rings of Power.)

            With all this in mind, saying hobbits shouldn’t be black is simply ignoring the facts.

 

Galadriel was my favourite Lord of the Rings character. She’s a wise witch, having immense intelligence and magical power. Plus she is one of few female characters so having her be as extraordinary as she is had a big impact on me. It is no surprise, then, that my anticipation for having her as a protagonist in the Rings of Power was high.

            Yet she demonstrates no magical capacity in this programme. Nothing. Instead, she just goes stabby-stabby with her sword. This was an utter disappointment for me. Maybe she learns magic in the thousand years between the Rings of Power and Lord of the Rings, I reasoned. Nope. My Tolkien-enthusiasts say she was magical during the Rings of Power period.

            Another thing baffled me. Galadriel got all suspicious of that guy’s lineage. But it came completely out of nowhere. No thought or action betrayed him as lying. As their conflict was provoked by the suspicion, and the plot relied on their conflict, having unconvincing suspicion was a major failing.

            I will congratulate, however, her relentless, single-minded focus. It was believable in both intensity and reasoning. Sometimes the vengeance element of it was stronger than the ethical element, but a shifting balance is believable. So this, her characterisation and driving of the plot, was well-managed.

 

There are around a thousand years between the Rings of Power and the Hobbit. This comes with criticisms and positives.

            First, a criticism that should be a positive. Some people complained that the wargs look too distinct between the two productions. But looking back at dog breeds hundreds of years ago, they are often unrecognisable from their current forms. If selective breeding can produce these results in a few hundred years, a thousand years is enough time for the wargs to change as little as they did.

            Next, a criticism. The technology and clothing between the two time periods are practically the same. A thousand years should be more than enough time for at least some innovation. Between magic and having lives long enough to develop intelligence, having a technologically stagnant world isn’t plausible.

Finally, a pure positive. The hobbits in the Rings of Power are vastly different from those of the Hobbit. This can be seen most notably in their clothing (particularly the headdress) and behaviour. Yet the hobbits in both time periods are both most definitely hobbits: their society evolved yet their identity remained.

 

There are more talking points in regards to the hobbits.

When the hobbits were saying ‘Harfoots’, I first thought they were saying ‘half-foots’, as in a reference to their size. They do, after all, call everyone else ‘Big Folk/People’, so calling themselves a name that references their height wouldn’t be too far out there. It wasn’t until I did research into Hobbit society that I saw the phrase ‘Harfoot’ that it clicked what was going on. So that changed how I thought the Harfoots thought about themselves.

The storyline of the hobbits didn’t interact with the other storylines. When writing, things that are irrelevant to the main story are often discarded because they’re not actually adding anything. The hobbit storyline happening at the same time as the rest of the plot doesn’t really justify it as ‘relevant’. However, the hobbit storyline could interact and be relevant to the larger plot in the next series, making this storyline necessary development. So this criticism can’t be fully actualised until series two.

The hobbits detect the wargs in the first episode. But at no point are the wargs seen, or even thought about, again by the hobbits. So the wargs being present with the hobbits seemed rather pointless. Maybe it was to illustrate how far the orcs were spreading, but if this was the case then maybe the hobbits should have seen wargs/orcs on their travels. Even just a tiny glimpse of an orc campfire then avoiding it would have been enough, both to make its point to the plot and make it relevant to the hobbits.

When the hobbits came to the orchard and found it destroyed, the Stranger made it all grow back. So you’d think the hobbits would be grateful. (They were.) You’d also think they’d have a good opinion of the Stranger and not assume the worst about him. Yet when a tree branch falls on Nori, an event that happens often in nature, the hobbits all blame the Stranger. Even Nori, who’s worked so hard to get the Stranger accepted by her community. This makes absolutely no sense. The plot needed a reason for the Stranger to leave the hobbits (so that the hobbits would have to chase after him) and this is what they came up with?

 

It was the most expensive show ever produced. Big drains of budgets include salaries, animation and the script.

            The animation was really good so it would have cost a lot. The plot/script was likewise good and likewise would have cost a lot. But I’ve seen shows with better (and more) animation which are produced for a far lesser cost. Plus the same with the script.

            Yes, there were loads of actors involved, so the accumulated salaries would have been high. But the main drain on salaries is those of famous actors. In this programme, there were only a handful of famous actors, and none of them were major big-hitters, so their salaries wouldn’t have been such a drain on the budget. Plenty of productions have more actors, and a higher percentage being big-hitters, yet their budgets are smaller.

            So why the budget was as high as it was, I don’t know. Even all these elements together don’t account for it. The quality of what came out doesn’t match the cost. Maybe global events hitting inflation, and the production having so many elements that are each effected by inflation, just made this programme a victim of the times? In other words, if inflation were accounted for, would the Rings of Power still be the most expensive production ever?

 

Just two final positives to point out.

Three people were tracking the Stranger. Their clothing, props and make-up were phenomenal. So different from anything else in Middle-earth! The costume designer(s) worked literal magic with them. Also, it’s funny they spent all this time and effort tracking the Stranger who wasn’t Sauron like they thought he was!

Ents are my favourite species from Middle-earth. I hope they’ll be brought in during the future series. As long as there’s a sensible place for them, that is (shoehorning them in would be the wrong decision).

 

The Rings of Power was a good show. The things that went wrong should have been noticed, especially as so much money was spent making it. I’m interested to see what direction it takes in the future series and look forward to the positives this will bring.

 

Beast (Film)

There were four main characters. Nate takes his daughters Mare and Norah to South Africa to stay with his ranger friend Martin.

*****SPOILERS******

The girls were great.

      Both arrived all wrapped up. Um, hello, it's Africa. Famous for being hot.

      The girls' dialogue was realistic, both the amount they said and what they said. Due to the repitition and amount of nonsense, it perfectly highlighted them being siblings.

      Norah saying her eyes were sweating, her sweat was sweating, made me giggle. Then she said not having wifi wasn't fair. Now, I can't fathom how it (not having wifi due to being in the wild) had anything to do with fairness, but her outrage was amusing. Her jabbing the lion in the arse was brilliant. She was a funny character (when she wasn't terrified).

There were four things that I particularly liked.

      It was refreshing that the film was ninety minutes long. I'm fed up of all these films being between two and three hours long.

      Nate catching the snake just as it was striking him was epic. Then he dropped it on the lion's arse. (I know he's a fake lion but his poor bum!)

      Martin saying, "Sorry, boy" before lighting the oily truck, himself and the lion on fire was touching. The lion had killed a lot of people and still the animal lover cared.

      At the end, there is an intense fight scene between the lion and Nate. It was emotional and made me tense at all the right moments. Simply thrilling.

There were four moments that, from a cinematic sense, weren't great.

      Mare drags the limping Martin through the bush and then the scene cuts to him lying down in the car. This transition was a bit jumpy. The briefest glance at them reaching the car, even just the car being in their line of sight, would have eliminated the jumpiness.

      Nate shoots the lion out of the abandoned church. One door is shut and the other is only just cracked open. At no point did we see them get closed!

      It wasn't until after Martin mentioned New York that Nate started sounding like a New Yorker. I reasoned that I just hadn't picked up on it. Then it sounded like this accent slowly grew stronger until it was fully recognisable about a third of the way through the film. It was a bit disconcerting.

      Nate prompts the lion to chase him. When they reach the open, Nate is way in front. They were close when the chase began; lions are much faster than humans. So the gap should have been closed far sooner. Where the gap closed was a better cinematic angle, sure, but they ignored reality to do it.

Nate's character seemed abnormally lucky.

      Consider the reach of a lion's paws and the sharpness of their claws. So how did Nate come off with only superficial wounds?

      How did Nate, a doctor from the city, survive in the bush when poachers, who've spent their whole life in the bush, couldn't? That seems backwards. The lion spent the film trying to kill Nate so it clearly wasn't sparing him like it did for Martin.

Aspects of behaviour from the main characters seemed utterly bonkers.

      Martin has a picture of Mare and Norah's pregnant mother on the wall. Even if you were close friends with them, do you have a picture of a pregnant woman on your wall when you're not in it? Martin mentioned his last girlfriend moving out, implying her has had at least one other girlfriend living with him there. How did they feel about their boyfriend having a picture of a pregnant woman on the wall? 

      Martin walked into water even though he just saw two crocs swimming in it. That would be stupid for a civilian, but a ranger? He should know better. Then Martin, bleeding heavily, sat right next to this water. Crocs take a lot of prey from the water's edge and they're attracted to blood. Again, as a ranger he should have known better. Yes he was heavily wounded but he wasn't dying. Yes there was a monstrous lion but that doesn't cancel out the croc threat. Moving from the water wouldn't have changed the lion danger levels but would have changed the croc danger levels. 

      Nate and his daughters flee to an abandoned church. None of them close the doors even though the lion is hunting them. Then Nate starts to open up all the doors! People can be daft when they're panicking but these actions seemed beyond this defence.

The ending of this film was superb, both uplifting and joyful.

      Even after everything the family went through, they still took a photo of themselves by their mother's favourote tree. This was touching, especially because going back into the bush could have been a trigger for trauma. Birds flew out the tree just as the photo timer went off, ruining the picture in the most perfect way.

      At the start of the credits, there was a photo of a giraffe sticking its tongue out. After such a serious film, such a jovial moment could have felt out of place. Yet it was perfect. It showed nature could be as beautiful as it was savage. 

The four main actors did such an incredible job. The concept of the film was interesting and different from what's currently on the market. Plenry of positives were present, even if some other things were distracting in a negative. All-in-all, I'm glad I watched it.

Critique: The Furthest Shore (Earthsea Quartet #3) (Ursula Le Guin)

In this story, Sparrowhawk has become the Archmage of Roke. There are tales of magic going wrong and Prince Arren is sent by his father to Roke to discover more.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Three aspects of this story were potent.

Sparrowhawk says a rowan tree can’t bear a crown (the leaves/branches) if it has shallow roots. Arren’s true name Lebannen means ‘Rowan’. So is Sparrowhawk taking Arren on the journey so that his roots are no longer shallow and thus he can bear a crown?

The pair spend time with the raft people who live their whole lives on the ocean sea. Seeing this culture was fascinating. They tie their babies to posts which is such a cute image.

They come across Cob who creates a portal into the Dry Land, the place of the dead. Dead people ‘were healed of pain, and of life.’ This line hit me hard.

 

Throughout, we see how the negative effects on wizardry are coupled with negative thought patterns, both people being in dark places and coming to incorrect conclusions.

A wizard lost his power by trading it for something else, saying he doesn’t need names where he’s going. An old lady said ‘wizard stuff’ keeps people from life which is why she lost it, words and names.

Without death, there is no renewal which is affecting the Balance. Magic is meant to uphold the Balance so it’s reasonable that, if the Balance is out of sorts, so would magic.

Roke’s students of wizardry have started to doubt wizardry because they think if wizards had power, they’d live forever. Seeing as wizards are taught about the Balance, this shows how bad the negative feelings spreading across the archipelago are becoming.

Dragons have lost the Old Speech. Considering Sparrowhawk once described dragons are the Old Speech itself, being its living form, this is quite serious.

Arren decides magic is just trickery because there’s no mastery over death. This logic doesn’t follow. At no point is magic been considered to be so. Magic is about Balance, and no death means no Balance.

 

There were more grammar and formatting mistakes in this book than the other three.

‘So if I am needed, therefore I am here.’ This is a very odd sentence. One can pass odd sentence structures off as part of the individual’s speech pattern if it’s a regular occurrence. In this case, it’s not.

Regularly, different speakers are put in the same paragraph. This creates unnecessary confusion.

Sparrowhawk says, ‘I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.’ As with a previous Earthsea critiques, this should be ‘until’ or ‘’til’.

There’s a lack of speech marks to denote the start of speech when ‘he whispered, I found the hole… It burned!”’

One paragraph was from Sparrowhawkw’s perspective and the next one was from perspectives on the far-away Roke. If there had been an empty line between the paragraphs, that would have been fine. But to switch the perspective with just an indent, especially when the perspectives aren’t within the same area (and hence not perceiving the same stimuli), isn’t enough of a distinction.

‘He has done with doing.’ A better choice would’ve been ‘was’ because the sentence in its current form is weird. The only suitable way to have ‘has’ in this sentence whilst retaining its meaning would be something like, ‘He has finished doing.’

 

The characters often display faulty thought processes, proving a distraction from the plot.

People are said to be uncaring about the world. This is described as denying death so people are acting like they will live forever. But this explanation doesn’t match the behaviour. Why would someone value the world less if they’re immortal? Wouldn’t they value it more because they’d be spending much more time there?

The Masters of Roke think that the archipelago not having one king is the thing from which the problems stem. There are two reasons why this is not so. One: the magical problems are magical in nature so the source must be magical in nature, too. Two: the assumption that a lack of a single authority would cause any societal problems is without justification. In fact, throughout history, bigger kingdoms and empires are more difficult to control so everyone being under a single rule would most likely make things worse. So the Masters reaching their conclusion falls flat.

Sparrowhawk rescues Arren from slavers. Arren asks why Sparrowhawk didn’t free the other slaves, who replies that he didn’t want to make their choices for them. Um, they’re slaves, so they don’t have a choice. Also, he made Arren’s ‘choice’, so why not make the ‘choice’ for the others?

 

Two things were blaringly obvious as false when comparing them with the earlier books.

Arren is shocked that someone with the low status of a goatherd could gain the high status of an archmage. This observation is fine. Yet Sparrowhawk has spent most of his life as a mage and, in his time before learning magic, he spent most of his time helping his dad as a smith. The status is still low so the point of the observation remains intact, even if the information of the observation is incorrect.

Sparrowhawk is described as short in this book yet in the first book as tall. Either this is an inconsistency or Arren is taller than Sparrowhawk. But if it were necessary to note how tall Sparrowhawk was, surely it would be necessary to note characters that were even taller?

 

Several things just didn’t make sense.

The pair spend a whole day swimming in the sea. Breaks are fine, but a whole day? That seems a waste, especially when the whole world is falling apart. If Sparrowhawk is trying to fix the Balance, why would he waste time?

When Sparrowhawk punished Cob all those years ago, it drove Cob to find a spell for immortality, to get back from death. (These aren’t the same things!) As a consequence, life is being drawn to Cob in the land of the dead. He needed to give up his name and identity for it to work. (If you no longer have an identity, you’re not immortal because you don’t exist anymore. Surely that’s worse than death?)

Back in the world of the living, Arren is naked bar ‘his sword-belt and sword’. The author tries to explain this by saying he was as naked as he was the day he was born, which is nice symbolism. But if his clothes were lost then his sword stuff should’ve been, too. Why this happened I can’t fathom but it’s a funny image nonetheless.

 

Arren’s father is termed ‘Ruling Prince’. There’s nothing wrong with this per se but four options (Sovereign Prince, Archprince, Grand Prince and Great Prince) already exist to describe a prince that rules as the highest authority in their country. There’s no reason to crowd this with another synonym unless it adds something (which ‘Ruling’ doesn’t).

 

This is the worst book of the quartet. If not for the raft people, I would have forgotten the story existed at all. There were too many problems to ignore. The fact that Sparrowhawk and Cob’s final showdown wasn’t that impressive was utterly disappointing Especially, I must say, as the book’s slow, meandering pace should have finished with a bang, just to give it a little bit of life.

Critique: The Tomb of Atuan (Earthsea Quartet #2) (Ursula Le Guin)

Tenar is the Priestess of the Nameless Ones, a figure so important that not even the godking could command her. This story details her ascension towards her authority before it (quite literally) collapses around her.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

There are three important plot points necessary for this review.

The One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan is reborn on the day of her death. Tenar, when presented to the Nameless Ones before the throne, was ‘eaten’ and henceforth had no name but Arha, ‘the Eaten One’. In the throne, ‘Nothing sat in it but shadows.’ These are identified as the Nameless Ones.  

The Hall of the Throne, the place dedicated to the Nameless Gods, was in a state of disrepair. whereas the Temple of the God-Brothers has new gilt. The Temple of the Godking was ‘showier… newer.’ The better the temple’s state of repair, the more important the god it contains is considered. The Priestess of the Godking is Kossil who uses her god’s perceived importance as authority, an authority that the godking backs himself. Finally, as the godking is a god, he doesn’t need the Priestess of the Nameless Ones to communicate witht eh Nameless Ones anymore.

The Nameless Ones almost convince Arha to sacrifice Sparrowhawk. After this, ‘she cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil.’ Arha regrets being mean to people and choosing to let others die but Sparrowhawk said she was a ‘vessel for evil’.

 

There were four (minor) problems.

The map of the labyrinth and the map of the Place of the Tombs of Atuan don’t align. They would if the labyrinth map were upside-down.

‘Snap! it’s gone.’ As the start of a sentence, there should be a capital to the ‘It’s’.

Kossil says she can have Arha killed for lying about killing Sparrowhawk. I know she thinks she deserves all the power and authority but that doesn’t give her the actual capacity to command others to kill the region’s most important religious figure.

Sparrowhawk says he won’t light a fire in case the fishers saw. But he used an illusion on the mountain to keep them undetected: what prevents him from doing so now?

 

There are two pieces of information that are intriguing.

It is said that ‘the ancient peoples and the unbelievers’ aren’t reborn. Instead, they are devoured by the Nameless Ones. Yet Arha, the prime believer of the Nameless Ones, was said to be devoured and she is reborn. She experiences both what believers and unbelievers experience? I which there was inworld theology that discussed the implications and consequences of this.

We find out that dragons talk about Erreth-Akbe as if he were a dragon. It’s important to remember this for book four.

 

The worldbuilding was unravelled at a steady, yet not boring, pace. As such, nothing seemed rushed and the importance of moments were fully realised. The problems were minimal as they didn’t make the plot untenable. The extent of Sparrowhawk’s power is displayed with subtle efficiency. Further, this is my favourite story of the quartet.