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Minor Mage is firmly in the "kid goes on scary quest and comes back stronger" genre. The 12-year-old protagonist is cast out to complete a nigh-impossible quest alone (aside from his armadillo familiar), facing ghouls and starvation and bandits and ghosts and murderers. He's a wizard, yes, but he's barely half-trained and only knows a handful of spells (though his herbal lore is pretty strong). Like the young heroes of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking and Illuminations, he has to learn how to make the most of his limited abilities in order to survive -- only this story takes place not in a city but mostly in wilderness an abandoned farmlands.

From an adult perspective, Oliver's constant lamenting that he's "only a minor mage" starts to grate after a while. But that's not the perspective it's written for: it's a kids' book, and operates on kids' fantasy logic.

Speaking of the target audience: In the afterward, Kingfisher/Vernon talks about trying to convince editors that yes, this is a children's book, and getting constant pushback that it's "too scary." (This is how she ended up publishing it as Kingfisher rather than Vernon) It reminded me of similar comments Neil Gaiman wrote about Coraline, remarking that it was too scary for adults but not too scary for children.

Sometimes I wonder: Do these editors remember being 12?

(Cross-posted at my website.)

This collection of three early novels in Le Guin's Hainish series initially looks haphazard, as if they were only collected because of writing order and not being as well-known as her later works.

• Rocannon's World is a serviceable fantasy quest wrapped in sci-fi trappings.
• Planet of Exile is a tighter story of isolation and people forced together by an invasion.
• City of Illusions involves a stranger seeking his identity in a post-apocalyptic Earth controlled by unseen alien masters.

But common threads tie them together. Not just her frequent themes like culture clashes, critiquing colonization, challenging racial stereotypes (both in-world and real), and just getting people to communicate. The second and third novels form a thematic duology:

• A single city of Earth colonists struggles to survive and adapt to a primitive world.
• A single city of alien colonists controls a primitive Earth they've adapted to their own desires.

And you can watch her craft growing stronger over the course of the three novels.

I wouldn't recommend someone start reading Le Guin here, but I would recommend it to someone who's familiar with her work.