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I’m gonna keep this relatively considering that this is a review on the fourth book in the series and no spoilers. What I can say is that Ursula K. Le Guin was really an author ahead of her time, doing things that nobody did when Earthsea was being written. I mean, this book follows a middle-aged woman, when most fantasy today are still about powerful and heroic young people. This has people well past their prime trying to survive, trying to live out the repercussions and the things that they’ve gone through in their lives, and this is brilliant for that.

I also really enjoyed the acknowledgments in my edition, because the author explains exactly why she did this and how she defied the norms of the time. I mean, I would love for more fantasy TODAY to be doing what Le Guin did thirty years ago. Not to mention that she decided on a cast of characters that weren’t primarily white, which I think is fantastic. Sure, maybe it’s not much today, but for the time that this was published, I think that what did is phenomenal.

I really liked the characters, and the story is really easy to follow and it actually feels refreshing. Now, I haven’t read a huge amount of traditional fantasy, I haven’t been able to get into it as the few I have read are often full of tropes, sexist, and Tolkien clones. This doesn’t feel like that and I know the author explicitly went out to do things were not entirely safe. Granted, she was a white woman, but white authors also weren’t writing stories in this vein at the time and I’m hugely appreciative of the influence of Earthsea.

I also like that it’s hard to put this novel into any genre, or any of the Earthsea novels. Many books distinctly feel and read like, middle-grade, YA or adult. See, this book certainly has many adult themes that one can pick up on and it deals a lot with grief and trauma, and darker things, like rape and murder. Not to mention that the characters are older people in this, even though we see them as youngsters in A Wizard and Atuan. However, the length of the book is short enough for middle-grade and shorter than the majority of YA novels(especially YA fantasy today). Now I know a lot of these marketing labels weren’t there yet, however, authors generally have a target audience and for me, this series so far can really be read by anyone that is familiar enough with language and rhetoric, which I think is fantastic. It also does feel timeless.

Now, these books aren’t like my favourite or anything, I’ve certainly read much better stories and I’ve liked a lot of characters more. This is why it’s a four star, as I’ve rated the first four Earthsea books. I feel that as someone that reads a fair bit of adult fantasy, I’m always wishing for more depth, detail and worldbuilding. I mean certainly, the depth and detail is there if you look at it, yet the author doesn’t go far enough, though I understand why, for it to transcend a precise target audience.

8/10