Firelight
short fiction 2018 Earthsea Cycle
Record
| First published | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | short fiction |
| Canon status | |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781473223547 |
Synopsis
Firelight is a short piece set late in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle, centering on the wizard Ged in his old age, resting by the fire in his modest home on Gont. As he sits quietly, his mind drifts back over his earlier life, his voyages through the Archipelago, his descent into the Dry Land, and the perilous companionship of his old friend Vetch, weighing his past as a powerful mage against the ordinary, unmagical existence he now leads. The story moves between memory and the present, where Tenar works nearby and their adopted daughter Tehanu is close at hand, as Ged reflects on the long-standing divide between the wizardry of men and the quieter magic long dismissed as belonging to village witches. It is a meditation on power surrendered and a life still found worth living.
Where it sits
- Universe: Earthsea Cycle
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Notes
- The Paris Review, Issue 225, Summer 2018; collected in The Books of Earthsea (2018). Ged in old age.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within Earthsea Cycle (standalone work): position 10 of 11: previous The Daughter of Odren (2014) · next The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition (2018)
Sources
← Earthsea Cycle dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.