Earthsea is so interesting! Ursula K. Le Guin made the bulk of her characters brown, and it’s possible to read it thinking about (unwritten?) fantasy written f

Earthsea is so interesting! Ursula K. Le Guin made the bulk of her characters brown, and it’s possible to read it thinking about (unwritten?) fantasy written from the perspective of the Austronesian expansion into the island belts of south-east Asia, or indeed of the Melanesian or Polynesian island societies, or even pre-Mycenaean-collapse Aegean peoples. Their world centred on their island towns and the sea. Magic as self-evident and critical for seafarers and farmers. Reading now about the archeological analysis of the settlement of New Zealand from Hawaiki, how the colonisation effort spanned many islands, and how the failure of pandanus plants - in the cooler climate - for sailcloth, meant that for most of the colonists and all of their descendants until modern times, it was a one way journey. So many questions and so much fantastic world-building material there…