Recommendations
Books Like A Wizard of Earthsea
Best books to read after A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea is the foundational philosophical fantasy — Ged's school at Roke, the shadow, the pursuit across the world's end. These recommendations continue the Earthsea cycle, explore the philosophical fantasy tradition Le Guin helped create, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the best speculative fiction.
- 1
Buy on AmazonThe Tombs of Atuan
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The second Earthsea — Tenar the priestess of the Nameless Ones, Ged entering the labyrinth, the most intimate Earthsea volume and the most concentrated.
- 2
Buy on AmazonThe Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The third Earthsea — Ged and the young prince Arwen sailing to where magic is dying, the darkest and most metaphysically ambitious of the original trilogy, the conclusion of Ged's arc.
- 3
Buy on AmazonTehanu
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The feminist revision — Tenar as an old woman, Ged stripped of his power, Le Guin rethinking the whole Earthsea world from a woman's perspective eighteen years after the original trilogy.
- 4
Buy on AmazonThe Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's most celebrated science fiction — Genly Ai on the planet Gethen where humans have no fixed sex, the philosophical speculation about gender that parallels Earthsea's exploration of naming and power.
- 5
Buy on AmazonThe Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The anarchist physics novel — Shevek traveling between Anarres and Urras, Le Guin's political philosophy at its fullest, the companion philosophical novel to Earthsea's Taoist world.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien
The foundational secondary world fantasy — Le Guin was responding to and revising Tolkien's tradition when she created Earthsea; reading both gives the fullest picture of what high fantasy can be.
- 7
Buy on AmazonJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
English magic in the Napoleonic era — Clarke's novel is the most formally ambitious recent addition to the British fantasy tradition that Le Guin participated in, sharing Earthsea's attention to the politics of magical power.
- 8
Buy on AmazonThe Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss
The contemporary epic fantasy most celebrated for its magic system and prose — where Le Guin's magic is based on naming and Taoist balance, Rothfuss builds Sympathy and Naming in a system with comparable internal logic.
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