The Farthest Shore

This book makes me want to drop my readthrough of Earthsea. I'm yet to decide. If I ever read Tehanu it seems like it's gonna be more of a hate read than anything else since reviews say it's as bad as this one only with 1000% more of “THE MESSAGE” and it completely ruins Ged's character.

This one is pretentious. There is nothing happening for 98% of the time and when there finally is something it's so extremely vague that even the metaphors she tried to put in there sound dumb. No tension. No sense of awe even though they are traveling through half of the world. It's all dull and vague. And I HATE her style of writing where she spoils the ending at the beginning. I know this is a children's book but god damn it why?!

I really liked first book and second one was passable, admittedly better as it went, but this book is jaw-droppingly poor compared to it. I cannot even fathom how this book can have average rating above four stars.

Originally I didn't know whether to first read Le Guin's sci-fi or fantasy novels so I created a poll and Earthsea completely obliterated Hainish Cycle. Can someone for the love of all good books explain to me how that's possible?