Lucas Blogs About Books

Huh, I never knew that Prospero was the Duke of Milan, IL. So, what's this book's deal? Well! I'm glad you asked, Hypothetical Reader. You're glad I asked the question I ask at the start of every post? . . . yes. Anyway, this book's deal is that it's a sequel to Shakespeare's  The Tempest written by Katharine Duckett. Didn't you already cover something like this ? No, that was an adaptation. This picks up the story where the play leaves off. Well, let's say a few weeks after the play leaves off. So, we all remember that the play ends with Miranda happily married to Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, and Prospero giving up magic and taking his rightful place as the Duke of Milan. . . . uh, yeah, we all definitely remember that. Oh, good, I was worried I'd have to explain it. Anyway, this book starts off with Miranda cloistered away in her rooms in the ducal palace in Milan. Wait, why's she in Milan, shouldn't she be with...

So, what's this book's deal? The Other Wind is the last of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series. Oh, good, for a while there this blog was threatening to turn into Lucas Blogs About Earthsea and a Series of Unfortunate Events .  Would it really be that bad? It might get a little boring. Okay, but fair warning, I've got ideas for at least two more posts about Earthsea, but I'll sit on them for a little while. They're about the adaptations, aren't they ? Yep! Anyway, before we talk about The Other Wind , let's talk SPOILERS   for Tehanu  and "Dragonfly." So at the end of Tehanu , Ged and Tenar have been captured by the new wizard of Re Albi who was a former disciple of Cob (the evil wizard from The Farthest Shore ) who was using Pelnish lore to keep the Lord of Re Albi alive but infirm and under his control. The wizard is about to kill them when the dragon Kalessin arrives in the TA-DA! nick of time and saves Ged and Tenar by im...

So, it's month four of A Year of Unfortunate Events , we're nearly a third of the way through. I suppose I ought to have come up with a potboiler intro for this feature by now. Ooh, like some Lemony Snicket-esque ,  "If you want to read about children's books with happy endings then look elsewhere" type of thing? Yeah, something like that, but wouldn't that be a pastiche of a pastiche? Hmm, good point. So is this intro you're writing now going anywhere? I guess not. You know the drill by now, I'm re-reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, there's gonna be SPOILERS . Book The Fourth - The Miserable Mill What did you remember about this book before re-reading it? Well! Uh. . . Mr. Poe sends the Baudelaires to live at a lumber mill, because. . . uuuuhhhhh. . . because that's what happens in the fourth book. And then, the guy in charge of the mill is always hidden in a cloud of cigar smoke, and Count Olaf is disguised as woman who ...

So, what's this book's deal? You know, Hypothetical Reader, you've been pretty cool about every book being an entry in the same series for the last several weeks. I guess I have, maybe I'm growing. Or maybe I just forgot to write you as a scold. Thanks. So, Tales from Earthsea  is the fifth entry in the increasingly inaccurately named Earthsea trilogy ( to borrow a joke from the Hitchhiker's Guide series ). This time around it's actually a collection of short stories. Shit! You're not gonna give each one its own review like you did with Terra Incognita , are you? No, I've learned my lesson. One review for the whole book. So, this sort of expands on the project begun in Tehanu . That is to say, Le Guin continues to interrogate the base assumptions of her own imagined world. None of the stories is a direct continuation of Tehanu , but there are a number of thematic similarities in these stories. So let's get going. First there's...

So, what's this book's deal? This is the fourth book in what had previously been believed to be the Earthsea trilogy. So then Ursula K. Le Guin decided to make it into a tetralogy? Hmm, let's talk about that in a future Lucas Blogs About X. Agreed, so does this book pick up where it's predecessor left off? It comes closer than any of the other Earthsea books. It begins just a little bit before the end of The Farthest Shore . But on the other side of the Archipelago, back on Gont. Is it about Tenar? No points for guessing. She actually goes by Goha now. You see, it's been twenty-five years since she left Atuan with Ged. In that time she's come to Gont, spent some time living with Ged's old master, Ogion, before marrying a farmer and settling down near Gont Port. Are things going well with her husband? Oh, he's dead. So she's a widow at . . . what? Forty? About. Also her two grown children have moved off the farm. Apple lives ...