A Wizard of Earthsea

It didn't get any better. Some writing just isn't for me, and this falls easily into that category. Here's a few things that got under my skin and pretty much ruined the experience:

1) I don't like it when books tell me about the character's future before I've met them for the first time. Telling me that your main character is some epic hero in the future who has done this and that and is amazing and well known serves no purpose. All it does is take away the tiniest bit of possibility that something bad may happen. This was also a huge issue in The Name of the Wind and the Mordant's Need books. If your character is going to be the coolest person in the world one day, fine! Just let me discover that as the story progresses.

2) Show me the action, don't just tell me about it. There are very few moments in this story when the action focused in enough to warrant actual dialogue. The author was too busy saying things like, "And then Ged went to such-and-such and did lots of cool things before heading north to some other place." If he did such cool things, how about you take a step back and show me. What was that journey like? Was he suffering? How about the people he met, were they friends? What were their conversations like. No no, don't tell me, let me read their dialogue!

3) Stop making up rules on the spot. "No one can look into the eyes of a dragon." Really? Since when? I know the main character did a lot of reading about dragons, but, well, that's all you told me. Not once did we get a sense of that learning, of his studies and conversations. All that was said was, "he studied everything he could find." I'm sorry, but that's not enough. If you're going to introduce new rules for your magic system, or bring up some major point in the world's history, I need you to set it up along the way so I don't feel like you're just making things up on the spot. Sure, the author probably spent a lot of time figuring out all this stuff ahead of time, but the way you present it is equally important. This was one of my biggest complaints with Brandon Sanderson's first novel, Elantris. I'm happy to say he learned from that and his later books are much better about world creation.

4) Characters need real depth. Our main character had a tiny spark of internal conflict in the beginning when his pride and envy got the better of him, but after that one episode, he was back to boring again. "Ged feared no man, but he feared where one might lead him." Lines like this make me roll my eyes and want to close the book for good.

Ok, enough complaining. I suspect this series, much like the Shannara series, suffers from "crappy first book" syndrome. I'm sure if I could get past it and into the later stories things would get much better. Unfortunately, there's too much out there to read to waste my time finding out.

On to the next series, please!