The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop
Here’s the next book in my series about my favorite books. The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop. It’s set in a world the author has written about before, in a series of books. I haven’t read them yet, for various reasons. This book that isn’t part of the series is well worth reading.’
The world it’s set in, comes across as pretty dark. There are two ‘species’ of people. Blood – that lives for a very long time, at least several centuries – and ‘ordinary’ people. If I understood the book correctly, both types can have magical powers.
There’s a whole interesting ‘mythology’ – or something – about this world. A young woman needs to have something called a virgin night – when she loses her virginity to a more experienced man, who preferably should be of a higher magical level than she is. It helps him ‘hold her back’ somehow. That might sound a bit anti-feminist, but actually it isn’t. After her virgin night, the young woman has achieved her true adult magical level, usually higher than the man who helped her.
If this man, who’s supposed to help a young woman, makes a mistake and fails to hold her back properly, she might end up being ‘broken’. Her entire life is ruined and her magical powers are weakened. This might be done purposely by ruthless men.
Those with magical powers have a sort of ‘inventory’ – a way to carry around things invisibly – something that computer game players will recognize.
The book starts out with a young man being sold as a slave at an auction. It’s supposed to be a sort of punishment for him. Ten years ago, he was trapped by an evil, but sexy woman and turned into a pleasure slave – a sort of sex slave. She put a ring on him (guess where…), which forced him to obey her.
Finally, he had enough of the humiliation his owner and her lover put him through and he killed them. That means he’s about to be sold to a new owner.
He’s bought by a notorious witch, who buys up slaves and takes them through the wilderness back to her own land. All those slaves then vanish without a trace and it’s assumed they are killed in some gruesome way. As soon as she pickes out the main character, she removes his slave ring, which is capaple of inflicting horrible pain, and replaces it with another one, this time invisible. That’s the ring from the title.
But the witch is neither the person he thinks she is, or evil. There is however another witch, who definitely is evil. She’s got a pleasure slave of her own, who is Blood, which means he lives for a very long time. He’s called the Sadist, because he hates women (aristocratic women, like his owner, not servants and other slaves). Actually, he’s a healer – some sort of doctor. He too wears a slave ring, in the same place the main character does. His owner is the enemy of the other characters and she chases after them throughout the whole book.
This other pleasure slave comes into the plot a little later, but from the start you know that he and the main character know each other. The one who’s Blood has trained the other guy, so that he’d be able to put up with the life of a pleasure slave.
The witch who has bought the pleasure slave, has bought other slaves too and they all set out together to get to her country, through the dangerous wilderness. Throughout this journey, the main characters find out many things. Among other things, he falls in love with the witch, who isn’t as old as he thought she was. Apparently, witches can disguise themselves to look younger and more beautiful.
Like I mentioned earlier, she’s not evil at all. She just wants to save as many slaves and animals as possible.
If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll see that I like this world a lot, even though it can be a bit dark. I won’t go into what happens next, but there are many dangers threatening the main characters on their way through the wilderness.
This is an interesting, but at times, quite gruesome book, with many memorable characters. Read it, but only if you like this type of fantasy. If you like the same old type of story, with girls being raped and enslaved, you might as well forget it.
Ursula Le Guin 2
I thought I’d get round to commenting on Ursula LeGuin’s other three books in the Earthsea series. For years no one thought that there would be any more. The Farthest Shore seemed to end the way you’d expect a ‘final book’ in a series would end. No particular loose ends left.
Still, many years later suddenly there was another book in the series – Tehanu. That time around, it was supposed to be the very last book in the series. In this book, as I mentioned before, the question of the women’s position in Earthsea society is addressed in more detail.
Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan appears in this book again. Now she’s older and as a widow she’s more or less invisible. She is thrown out of her house by her son who returns unexpectedly after many years of absence at sea. An old wizard has left her his house so she moves there to live on her own.
She’s learned from this wizard so she’s quite a good healer and one day she’s called out to see to a little girl who’s been badly burnt. It turns out she’s also been sexually assaulted and abandoned by her family. Actually, the men who assaulted her seem to have been members of her family, but really, her origins are quite different.
Tehanu – the little girl – survives and stays with Tenar, but is very shy and quiet.
I realize that I don’t remember the whole story very well. It’s been a while since I last read it. I do know that Tenar is cursed and so is Ged, who comes to live with her, after he’s lost his powers. Unfortunately, that means he can’t help Tenar.
Help comes from an unexpected source. In the end, Tenar and Ged learn about Tehanu’s true nature.
The next book – Tales from Earthsea – is a collection of stories, as the name implies. One story is longer than the others and it’s about a girl who wants to break the male monopoly for studies in magic. She’s not allowed to, but by then, everything in the world seems to have changed drastically. You get the impression more is to come. A major revolution.
That’s what you get in the very last book – The Other Wind. There you get an explanation of where the dragons went – though there were at least some when Ged became a Dragon Master, meaning someone the dragons will talk to.
As I mentioned before, Ged’s culture is based on magic – other cultures may be too, in Earthsea, but theirs is special in one important way. It’s connected to their gruesome afterlife. A long time ago, a pact was made, but now that isn’t working anymore. Besides, who would want to face that sort of afterlife?
I’m not going to get into many details about this book. Read it yourself. What I can tell you is that this one is even darker and more ‘grownup’ than the other books put together, with the exception of Tehanu. I can’t imagine reading that at the age of 11 or so. Six-year-old girls raped because they’re different… It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of, and this book is pretty nightmarish too.
Like I mentioned before, even Ged is afraid of the afterlife. This time, he doesn’t have any hopes of getting out alive or even with his soul intact.
I can tell you that I hate books with unhappy endings and I can recommend this book, so draw your own conclusions. 🙂
Normally, when a series gets to be long – more than three or four books – I tend to be very suspicious. Fortunately, my fears were not realized. I definitely don’t regret reading this series of books, and I know I will keep re-reading it over the years. Anyone who likes well written fantasy should be able to appreciate the Earthsea series.
Just a word of warning. As I’ve mentioned a few times, some of the books are really dark and tragic. Despite that, I wouldn’t say they’re depressing.
I couldn’t stop reading, because I cared so much about Ged and Tenar and Tehanu and wanted to know what happened to them. Ursula LeGuin can be very happy about her achievement. I know I would be if it had been me. If you haven’t read these books yet, you have something to look forward to. Go on. I envy you. 🙂
Ursula Le Guin
One summer when I was a child, I was on the Swedish island Öland, in the Baltic sea. Being the voracious reader that I’ve always been and still am, I had to go to a library. It was a small library in a very small place, and it probably doesn’t exist anymore. In any case, there was a man, who might have been a librarian, or a teacher and he began to ask me about what books I usually liked to read. I told him, then he walked across to one of the bookshelves and picked out a few books.
They were part of the Earthsea trilogy (now there are a few more books in the series). It was almost like magic. That man had found books that suited me perfectly.
Soon, I bought the whole trilogy. I just had to own the books myself and I also wanted to read the first one, which must have been missing that day in the library.
Ursula LeGuin has created a fascinating world. She must have put a lot of work into it, because the whole world is so evolved.It’s easy to visualize the different islands with their diverse cultures.
The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is about a little goatherding boy, Ged, whose mother died when he was very young. Ged turns out to have a talent for magic and ends up helping the village witch. One day, enemies attack Ged’s island and with a mixture of cunning and a little magic he manages to save his village. This eventually leads to his being sent away to become the apprentice of a wizard.
There Ged meets a girl, who he tries to impress, and so ends up in trouble. The wizard he was apprenticed to sends him to Roke, the School of Magic. But the shadow Ged has released follows him everywhere. The rest of the book is about how Ged finally manages to ban the evil he set free, in his youthful folly.
The second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is about a young nameless priestess. She serves some nameless gods and leads a dull and somewhat frightening life. One day a man shows up. Until now, she’s only encountered eunuchs and seen the King’s warriors from afar. The priestess is immediately drawn to the stranger who has dared to penetrate into their sanctum.
She’s supposed to kill him, but finds herself reluctant to do so. Instead, she can’t resist going to see him and talk to him, though that’s the last thing she should do. Arha – the Eaten one – can’t forget him and eventually, it leads to a major change in her life. Ged – because it’s Ged who has shown up again, now as the Arch Mage of Roke – gives her back her name and takes her away from the Tombs where she’s spent all her life, at least as much as she can remember.
Ged was on a quest and he was able to conclude it sucessfully., while helping Tenar – the former Eaten One.
You get the impression Tenar has fallen in love with Ged, but a wizard has to be celibate, so he leaves her. She ends up in a relatively good situation, but overall women don’t count for much in Earthsea.
The third book, The Farthest Shore, is more mature and considerably darker. The magic is beginning to run out, in Earthsea. Since everything is based on magic, nothing else works very well in their society. Ged is accompanied by a young prince, who’s trying to save his realm. It doesn’t take very long for Ged to realize that what is happening, isn’t an accident. Someone’s caused the crisis. The trail leads him all the way into death. It’s a horrifying world, where mothers don’t care about their children and everything is barren and dusty. An endless torment. Even a wizard fears death.
Since there will be more books in the series, you might be able to guess that Ged somehow survives. He doesn’t escape unscathed though. At the end of it all, his hair is grey and he’s lost all his powers. The young prince emerges as a new kind of ruler – the Mage King.
Ged is taken unconscious, to Tenar’s home. By now, she’s been married and had children and is now a widow. Since Ged’s lost his powers, he’s allowed to love a woman.
I’ll comment on the rest of the books in the series later.
If you like evolved fantasy worlds with an entire mythology and history and – an important detail – maps, I think you’ll appreciate Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series. The characters are memorable and easy to like.
The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is in many ways more of a book for children than the others.
The second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is among other things, a love story, very romantic and sad, but if you don’t like that, you’ll find many different layers to the story.
The third book is more grownup and, as I mentioned before, dark. Here, the fear of death is a constant subtext. You begin to understand what’s waiting for Ged and everyone else – but not Tenar – she’s from another culture, and for some reason it means she doesn’t have to fear the bitter afterlife.
It’s easy to get swept up in this world and be fascinated by the islands with their varied cultures. There’s even a people who live their entire lives on the open sea. It’s all described skillfully and vividly by LeGuin.
Perhaps I should mention something I see as negative.The entire world is rather mysgynist – a patriarchal world. Everything of value is owned by men. Women hardly count, except as bearers of heirs and as an unpaid workforce. To begin with the author doesn’t remark on this in any way. You get the impression that she takes it for granted. Perhaps it isn’t too surprising. She was born in the 1920’s.
Later in the series, it seems as if that problem’s caught her attention. You get some insight into the situation, from Tenar’s point of view and in a way, some comments on it. There will be more in the books I’ll go into later on.
This series of books belongs to my very favorites, so I can really recommend it. I hope you’re going to enjoy it as much as I have and as much as i still do.
