In the first volume of this legendary fantasy series originally published in 1968, a boy grows to manhood while attempting to subdue the evil he unleashed on the world as an apprentice to the Master Wizard. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
This classic YA fantasy launched the Earthsea series, one of writer Ursula K. Le Guin's most famous sets of books. A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA is a coming-of-age tale set in a magical landscape populated by witches, wizards, and dragons. Despite these familiar fantasy trappings, Le Guin's powerful, lyrical prose allows her to avoid cliché and lend her world its own distinctive mythic quality. Ged, or Sparrowhawk as he's also known, is a precocious, reckless young wizard. When he inadvertently summons up a dark spirit during a spellcasting gone awry, the creature pursues Ged all over Earthsea until he finally learns how to confront it.
- Genre: Juvenile Fiction, Science Fiction + Fantasy, Fiction + Literature Themes
- Subgenre: Bestiary, Conflicts + Dualities, Ecology, Human Qualities + Behavior, Magic, Quest, Saga + Myth + Legend, Science Fiction + Fantasy + Magic, Alternate + Parallel Worlds, Rites of Passage, Legends + Myths + Fables / General
- Age: Teen
- Publisher: Graphia
- Pages: 297
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: September 11, 2012
- Date Published: September 11, 2012
- Author: Ursula K. Le Guin