The Farthest Shore

Did You Know?

• The Farthest Shore was first published in hardback by Atheneum in 1972, with cover art by Gail Garraty.
• A paperback edition was published by Puffin Books in 1974, with cover art by David Smee.
• Reviewing the novel, Lester del Rey called it 'fantasy with a logic of execution that is usually found only in science fiction'.

Plot

An inexplicable malaise spreads across Earthsea, causing magic to weaken, songs to be forgotten, and people and animals to fall sick or go mad. Archmage Ged and Arren, the young Prince of Enlad, leave Roke Island on Ged's boat Lookfar to find the source. In Hort Town they encounter a drug-addled wizard named Hare, who is under the dream-spell of a powerful wizard promising life after death at the cost of magic, identity, and names. Ged and Arren sail to Lorbanery, where the magic of dyeing is lost and the people are listless and hostile. Continuing southwest to the furthest Reaches, Arren falls under the dark wizard's influence and fails to help Ged when islanders injure him. The Raft People, nomads living on great rafts beyond any land, save them and nurse them back to health, but the sickness arrives at their midsummer festival, silencing the singers. The dragon Orm Embar begs Ged to sail to Selidor, the westernmost island, where the dark wizard is destroying dragons. Ged and Arren voyage past the Dragons' Run, encountering mad dragons devouring each other. On Selidor, Orm Embar has lost speech. They find the wizard in a house of dragon bones at the western tip of Selidor. Ged recognizes him as Cob, a dark mage he defeated years earlier. Cob, desperate to escape death, opened a breach between worlds that is sucking away life. Orm Embar impales himself on Cob's staff, crushing Cob, but the undead Cob crawls to the Dry Land. Ged and Arren pursue him there; Ged defeats Cob and closes the breach, sacrificing all his magic power.

Themes

The Farthest Shore is a bildungsroman told mostly from Arren's perspective, as he develops from an awestruck boy into a confident man who will become the first king in centuries and unify Earthsea. Ged has matured, now guided by necessity and duty rather than the thrill of power or fame; he tells Arren to do only what must be done and cannot be done otherwise. Cob serves as Ged's alter ego, a version of Ged who did not turn back from summoning the dead but pursued it to its conclusion. Ged's final confrontation with Cob reprises his earlier confrontation with the Shadow, and his sacrifice of all his power fulfills his youthful wish to undo the evil of his own necromantic spell. The book explores the Taoist concepts of Balance and Equilibrium, showing how life comes from death and death from life, with Ged portrayed as a wiser archmage.