jackson

What a beautiful book. The prose is poetic, but not in an annoying way. The world feels realistic and immersive. The characters are engaging and understandable. The story is tragic and beautiful. Very well written. If you loved Circe you should like this too, as long as two dudes being gay isn't a problem for you.

This is a hard book to rate for me.

I loved the first half. It incrementally builds out a very interesting world filled with neat sci-fi concepts, exploring lots of interesting ideas. Meanwhile, it gives us lots of time to get to know our main character, how she thinks, and the characters around her. The characters, sci-fi concepts, and philosophical musings make this section of the book a fantastic read.

In the second half, once she starts waking other humans up, it became much less interesting to me. The cast of characters grows so quickly that (understandably) few are given much page time to understand them. But either because of the size of the cast, or for other reasons, the other humans all fell flat for me - 1-dimensional and uninteresting. Even our main character gets less interesting, as we have less time with her thoughts, so her actions start to feel less realistic, less relatable. Meanwhile, a bland political plot unfolds with a bland romantic sub-plot. Lacking compelling plot or characters by the end, I was ready for it to be done and left disappointed. 

Beautifully creative world/setting with an interesting interplay between sci-fi and religion, with a good mythic story overall.

But:

The storytelling is disjointed
The characters are difficult to keep straight
The characters don't feel real
Sometime the prose doesn't give enough info to know what's happening. Other times it's excessively verbose or flowery.

All of this makes it a very non-compelling read

Very good book. While a break in theme and pacing from the other Earthsea books, Tehanu is still steeped in Le Guin's signature writing style that says so much using such simple, elegant language. It's a thoughtful book dripping with insight, wisdom, and philosophy. It wrestles with questions of gender and identity, while rounding out the world of Earthsea, giving the perspective of the ‘ordinary folk'.

Don't expect a page turner. But do expect gentle, kind wisdom and thoughtfulness.