Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4) in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Aug 14, 2017 Bradley rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-shelf, worldbuilding-sf, fantasy

I think this was an interesting installment for the Earthsea books not because it continued the grand tradition of huge fantasy implications and events, but because it flips our expectations and gives us a very domestic view of Earthsea.

That's not to say that evil things don't happen, because they do, but the scope is pulled all the way back in, with Tenar from book 2 and Ged meeting up again after almost a lifetime, with her as a middle-aged woman and Ged much changed after the events of book 3 ...more

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Jun 29, 2020 Di Maitland rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobook, magic, gentle-fantasy, abuse, children, fantasy, non-humans, fabulous-writing, dragons, identity

"The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.

A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am

"The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.

A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name?”

I always find Ursula Le Guin books very hard to review and this book is no exception.

Written 18 years after The Farthest Shore, it is based 25 years after The Tombs of Atuan and overlaps somewhat with The Farthest Shore. Tenar, past Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, is now middle-aged, widowed and mother to two grown children and, a young, adopted girl, Therru, crippled and scarred by her birth parents. When Ged arrives home on Gont, weak and magicless, Tenar sets to nursing him back to health, both physically and mentally, whilst facing threats of her own.

The Afterword is essential reading if you want to get the most out of the book. In it, Le Guin says:

By the time I wrote this book, I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included, the one’s who can’t do magic, the one who don’t have shining staffs or swords; women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless; unheroes, ordinary people, my people. I didn’t want to change Earthsea, but I need to see what Earthsea looked like to us.

Needless to say, Le Guin had the feminist epiphany she was threatening at the start of Planet of Exile. Tehanu might not have a lot going for it in terms of plot, but it is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be a woman, and by contrast a man. What is a woman's value, her place? Can a woman be a magician? And if she can, like Tenar, and chooses not to, pursing marriage and children instead, is she wasting her talents? And Ged, who is he if not a magician? Can he be just a man, and if he can, must he align himself to how other men act? So many questions, and Le Guin isn't subtle about getting us to ask them. Fortunately, society, and feminism, has moved on somewhat since the book was published and I feel confident in saying that a woman can do whatever the hell she wants to do: magician or mother, sailor or superhero.

Whilst it's predecessors were considered bildungsroman, or coming-of-age stories with story moral lessons for its young readers, this book, I feel, is different. We've moved on children's fiction. Children want the romping expedition of A Wizard of Earthsea, or the gentle quest of The Farthest Shore. They do not want the introspective foray demanded by this book - for a while I wasn't even sure I did. It's certainly more literary than the usual books I pick up, and though the language remains simple it's ripe for analysis - I even read a few of these analyses online and think I got more from the experience because of it. I also think I got more for having also read some of Le Guin's Hainish cycle, and recently too.

More than almost any other book I've read, I found my enjoyment of Tehanu was geography dependent: sitting in the hammock, sun shining, birds singing, and book quietly narrated in my ears, I embraced the gentle story and its not so gentle questions; sitting at my computer, multi-tasking, I found it all too easy to tune out or lose interest. So find a hammock and prepare to ponder. ...more

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Jul 29, 2025 Dave J. rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: slice-of-life, reviewed-books, fantasy, sub-par-or-just-awful

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It was bound to happen sometime. A good author can't always have a golden output, doubly so for when they've spent years away from a series. Sometimes an idea should be left well alone, even if there's a desire to return to it. This also happened with Trenton Lee Stewart (another favorite of mine), who wrote a terrible fourth novel in his mystery series, and now I see that same lack of vigor, preciseness, and sensibility in Tehanu.

This book isn't necessarily an attempt to recapture greatness, bu ...more

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