Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 1

The Tombs of Atuan is still my favorite of the Earthsea books. There’s something fascinating about a labyrinth that you must traverse in total darkness, keeping a map and counting turns in your head. It’s actually what got me curious about what was then still a trilogy in the first place.

Ged is still involved, but he’s not the main character this time through. He’s older and wiser, and the viewpoint shifts to Arha, another teenager with a different kind of power. A priestess in a society that abhors magic and writing, whose name has been erased, who instead of sailing the ocean stays in one place, on land, in the middle of a desert, whose domain is the darkness within the earth.

The first half of the book focuses on Arha growing up at the temple complex, dealing with her changing relationship with the other priestesses to other gods as she grows into her role as the sole priestess to the Nameless Ones, and as she discovers (or rediscovers?) their realm in the dark. Petty rivalries, politics between priestesses of different faiths (only some of whom actually believe), friendships that can never truly be equal.

I’ve seen reader reviews complain that “the main character” (meaning Ged) doesn’t show up until halfway through the book, and let me tell you, they really missed the point. The story isn’t about Ged finding the lost half of the Ring of Erreth-Abke. It’s about Arha and what she does when he literally casts a harsh light on her world. It’s about her figuring out what to do about him, and what his presence reveals about the life she’s lived and the powers she’s served up until now.

And it’s about her figuring out who she really is. Is she merely The Eaten One? Is she Tenar? Is she both? If she’s Tenar, who is that, when she hasn’t been Tenar since childhood? It’s a recurring theme in Earthsea: True names matter, but who you are is a deeper question: Ged and his shadow, Arha/Tenar, Arren and his destiny, Tehanu, Dragonfly and so on.

(Spell)Casting

This time through, I realized two things about my mental images of the characters: first, that Tenar has always been Jennifer Connelly in my mind. (What can I say? Labyrinth made an impression!) Second, I have now headcast Sendhil Ramamurthy as Ged/Sparrowhawk (Heroes-era for the later parts of the first book and this one, and his current age for the rest).

My mental image of the place has changed over time as well. Between re-reads I sometimes forget it’s a desert at all. Knowing now that it was inspired by the Oregon High Desert, and remembering that it’s on a river, I see it more as the chaparral of Anza-Borrego rather than the drier, emptier parts of the Mojave.

You Had To Bring Up Reincarnation

Arha’s position at the Tombs is based on the belief that she’s the previous priestess reincarnated. This book doesn’t really consider whether it’s true, only whether it matters. Is she merely the latest in the line of Eaten Ones, or is she herself? It seems to contradict what we see of the land of the dead in the first and third books, but it’s still possible to imagine an exception. I haven’t gotten to The Other Wind yet in my re-read, but the truth of the matter is one of the questions that Le Guin wanted to explore.

But she does come down very strongly on one side of Tenar’s crisis of faith regarding the Nameless Ones. They do exist. They do have power. They do rule the domain she’s lived in all her life. Ged admits all that readily. The question she really needs to answer is whether she should (or even can) continue serving them.

Forrestal is the eastern end of a chain of nature reserves managed by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy that form a continuous corridor along the hillsides facing the ocean away from the Los Angeles Basin. And between upthrust layers, ancient landslides, recent landslides, and an abandoned quarry, it’s what you might call “geologically interesting area.”

Trails range from nearly flat to infuriatingly steep. There’s not much shade unless you’re short and the sun is low.

What Goes Up…

The steepest trail runs up a ridge along the east edge of the reserve. Along the way it looks down into that quarry, splits off horizontally to a much easier trail along the hillside and across a narrow valley, and continues upward as an out-and-back spur of loose rock and slippery dirt called the Cristo que Viento trail, which I think translates as “Christ, how windy!” It took me several visits to reach the top, since I’d let myself get out of shape, and while I’ve built back enough stamina back to handle it now, my calves still complained most of the way up, and my knees complained all the way back down. The view wasn’t even worth it. It wasn’t that much different than the view from the Mariposa Trail.

The second-steepest trail runs up a hillside along the west edge of the reserve toward a viewpoint, connecting to a trail that runs along the top of a cliff, then back down to the lower areas. This one’s more worth it, because you look out across a canyon that looks like it was formed by a section of the hill detaching and sliding down toward the ocean. And this trail has some switchbacking to it. The last time I was there I approached it from the other side, and heard another hiker complaining breathlessly on his way up!

Canyons and Hillsides

The rest of the trails aren’t that bad, even the ones with significant grade to them.

The Fossil Trail runs through that canyon, and more trails run up and down both sections of the hill. The Vista trail offers a nice view of the cliffs. The Mariposa Trail has some good ocean views, and crosses a narrow valley with an intermittent streambed and actual trees (the only real shade in the place). And you can probably guess how the Cactus Trail got its name.

The southwest corner used to connect to the Portuguese Bend Reserve. Unfortunately that whole reserve has been closed due to the current slow-moving landslide activity. I spent 10 years saying “I should hike there someday” and never got around to it. (Who knows, maybe it’ll stabilize while I’m still healthy enough to hike.)

Getting There

One way or another, you need to go around the hill. Coming from the east you’ll either need to go through the hills or all the way out to San Pedro. Coming from the west, you’ll be driving through the active landslide area where the road’s been slipping and repeatedly patched. Either way, you need to turn inland away from the golf course entrance, then up a curving residential street, past a park on the left, to an open area with a gate that’s usually open during the day.

The main trailhead is near the gate, and you can park on either site of the road. There are two more trailheads, one at the end of the road and along another spur that goes past the sports fields, but you’ll have to hike to get to them since the road is closed to vehicles past a certain point. There’s also a city park near the gate, where there are picnic areas and a new community center with bathrooms and a water bottle filling station.

A collection of short stories from early in Le Guin’s career, spanning her first sale through the time when she’d begun to be recognized as a major force in the genre.

Semley’s Necklace ★★★★★

Adapting the one-night-in-faerie trope to relativistic space travel, this works better on its own than as the prologue to Rocannon’s World.

April in Paris ★★★★★

A delightful story about time travel, loneliness and companionship, set in one room in Paris across centuries.

The Masters ★★★☆☆

In this society, once you master your craft, that’s it. There’s nothing else to learn, because figuring out new things is heresy. Interesting, but I think “The Stars Below” explores the themes better.

Darkness Box ★★☆☆☆

A fairy tale that follows dream logic and reversals.

The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names ★★★★☆

The first two stories of Earthsea, set long before the time of Ged and Tenar. They’re interesting both on their own and in seeing what Earthsea grew from, and I’ve reviewed them in more detail on their own page.

Winter’s King ★★★★★

My favorite story in the collection, worth its own review (TODO). Set in the Hainish universe, primarily on Gethen, though it has less to do with gender and more to do with relativity, perspective, and rearranging snapshots of time.

The Good Trip ★★★☆☆

What is this I don’t even.

Nine Lives ★★★☆☆

A rare hard-sci-fi story from the author, focusing on a space mining operation where the new crew shows up and they’re all clones of the same person. The first half is a bit of a slog through exposition, but it gets moving at the point where the title starts to make sense and questions of individuality become more urgent.

Apparently a movie adaptation got as far as casting back in 2018, but nothing’s been announced since. (It probably would be a better movie than novella, and would make an interesting double-feature with Moon.)

Things ★★★★☆

A surreal tale of a seaside village than giving up on meaning as “the end” arrives, but two people keep trying to live their lives, and a bricklayer just can’t quite invent boats.

A Trip to the Head ★★☆☆☆

Another weird experiment that doesn’t quite work.

Vaster than Empires and More Slow ★★★★☆

A fascinating story of a dysfunctional deep-space crew where everyone has their own neuroses, including an empath who has immense difficulty with other people, as they explore a world with only plant life. Another one worth its own review. Set in the Hainish universe, a long way away from the worlds of the Ekumen.

The Stars Below ★★★★☆

An astronomer, his observatory burned by the authorities, is forced into hiding in an underground mine. Like “The Masters,” it’s a take on forbidden ways to gather knowledge, but this one’s more character-driven and gets into the psychology of having your life’s work destroyed and what’s left of your world turned upside-down.

The Field of Vision ★★★☆☆

Interesting and disturbing take on alien artifacts and sensory overload.

Direction of the Road ★★★☆☆

Movement is relative. Told from the point of view of a tree.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas ★★★★★

An absolute classic on societal guilt and on how we rationalize others’ misery, especially when we believe it’s the price for our own happiness, boiled down to a single, stark choice.

The Day Before the Revolution ★★★★★

A character study of an aging revolutionary, and a glimpse of the woman behind the anarchist philosophy that will come to define the society of Annares in The Dispossessed. Her days of both theory and practice are largely behind her now, and she thinks back on what she built and what (and who) she lost as she navigates a world in which the revolution she’s worked so hard for has moved beyond her.

And yes, as a DS9 fan, reading about a “founder” named Odo is a bit odd, but I started picturing her more like Le Guin herself as she looked when she was much older, which I think suits her.

I finally read the original two stories set in Earthsea, before Le Guin began the first novel and the stories of Ged and Tenar. She hadn’t quite settled on the tone yet, but you can see the rough outlines of the archipelago, and magic working through words and names, and mages both traveling and settled. And, surprisingly enough, the land of the dead and the human/dragon dichotomy, themes which she brings together in The Other Wind.

“The Word of Unbinding” feels a bit more like an Earthsea story despite some of the inconsistencies. (Le Guin suggests in the intro that perhaps trolls went extinct in Earthsea sometime after this story.) It’s a story of the balances between life and death, and between responsibility and ambition.

“The Rule of Names” feels a bit more Tolkien-esque, set in a pastoral village like the Shire, complete with a Mr. Underhill who lives, well, under a hill and a mysterious wizard showing up on an equally mysterious errand. Though with a wry twist at the end.

Each stands on its own, and neither really contains any major revelations about Earthsea that aren’t explored in more depth in the novels (ok, except maybe the trolls), but they’re interesting enough to be worth checking out, whether you’ve read the rest of the series or not.

Both stories are collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters and The Books of Earthsea. (The former is a lot easier to carry around unless you’ve gone for a digital edition!)

A serviceable dialer app for the actual phone part of your smartphone, using your device’s contacts, favorites and call history. Still lets you swipe to accept/reject a call. You can block calls from specific numbers, or from calls with hidden numbers, or from anyone who isn’t in your contacts.

Advantages over Google’s default dialer:

• You know it’s not sending your call activity to the cloud.

Disadvantages:

• It also can’t pre-screen likely spam/scam calls, do speech-to-text transcripts or menus, or offer visual voicemail, and it doesn’t have much in the way of accessibility features.

It’s not clear whether it picks up any CallerID data beyond the incoming number. Since switching, I haven’t seen any labels, even “Scam likely,” on incoming calls that aren’t in my contacts. But then I don’t get a lot of actual phone calls, so it’s hard to be sure.