Though these scores are relatively low, they would be far lower from most readers, especially those who haven't read and enjoyed the first three books in the Wizard of Earthsea series.

I find it hard to say exactly what I like and dislike about this story, and the fan reaction is very mixed as well. Check out the Amazon.com reader reviews. As of August 16, 2004, the most helpful review, approved by 35/41 people, gives the book 1 star. The 2nd most helpful review, with approved by 18/32 people gives the book 5 stars. The 3rd most helpful review, approved by 17/24 people, gives the book 2 stars. They continue on in that vein, with helpful reviews all over the place, from 1 to 5 stars. Almost everyone agrees that Tenahu is well written and brilliant in some ways, but half the people think it's a blatantly-feminist diatribe tacked onto the end of beautiful fantasy trilogy, and half think it's a great story despite lacking much of a plot or any sort of action.

Seldom have I seen a novel with such varied most-helpful reviews, and though the average customer review is 3/5 stars, there are definitely more 1 and 2 star reviews among those with more than 10 "helpful" ratings.

The Earthsea trilogy is interesting, and something I should devote more time to discussing at some time. I think it's a masterpiece, and essential reading for any fantasy fan, but at the same time the actual books themselves aren't really very much fun to read. Tehanu is clearly the weakest of the first 4 novels, and for any reader who wants action and excitement in their fantasy, this book is going to be unreadable. Before last week, my only memories of it were from one read years and years ago, and I thought it was horrible then. Boring, impossibly slow, almost devoid of action or plot. And that's coming from someone who owns and has read the first 3 Earthsea books multiple times, and who thinks they are brilliant, in their own peaceful, slow, introspective way.

They're definitely not for action-fantasy fans. Very little happens, much of the action is offscreen, and they're far more about suffering and sacrifice and slow struggle and solitude than any other fantasy I've ever read. They do have their big bang moments of fun (book 1 is the best for that sort of thing), but the concepts and the state of the world and the way magic works there and the sociological aspects of them are what you should enjoy. If you're reading them waiting for cool spells and dragon fights you're going to be damn disappointed, since there are some very cool dragons, and a few awesome spells, but those moments are few and far between, and that's more true of Tehanu than any of the others.

I can appreciate the effort LeGuin put into this novel, and the care and detail she puts into describing the characters and events, and it's all very believable and realistic... but it's also very boring, if you're expecting epic plotlines and world-altering/endangering plot twists, like most fantasy is full of. I'd recommend this one far more to fans of serious literature or even women's literature than to fantasy fans, though it simply lacks enough of a plot to qualify as great literature in any genre.

The story told in Tehanu is an novel one, for the genre. Basically, the main character is a woman named Tenar who was a young priestess in a foreign land in the 2nd book of Earthsea. She was rescued/taken away by the hero mage, and brought back to his land as the herald of a great new age of peace, since she brought half of the legendary ring of Erreth-Akebe, the mage Ged had the other half, and once it was joined the possibility of peace coming once again to the land existed.

Those events are 20 years or more in the past, during which the world was nearly destroyed by events of the 3rd book; events that Ged had to give all of his power to stop, while on a quest with a young man who would afterwards become the first true king of the land in over 800 years.  Tenar, the woman he rescued in the 2nd book, was never mentioned again in the 3rd novel. When we see her again in Tehanu, the 4th book, she's a middle-aged woman, a widow living on her dead husband's farm, and has become utterly common. No one in her small farming village thinks anything of her, other than that she was originally a foreigner, and she's made a life for herself in her adopted land, one as far from her powerful princess/mage upbringing as possible.

(There is some time line slippage, since it's clearly been 30 or 40 years for Tenar; she has 2 grown children and is an old woman, yet it's only been 20 years in the larger world. While this is technically a mistake, I'd say it's certainly an intentional one; an example of the author taking some creative license that is needed to age Tenar appropriately, and give her two children of the appropriate age for events in this novel to work.)

You start the novel remembering Tenar and expecting her to be needed to save the land, to return to the power she held in her youth... and then 150 pages later basically nothing has happened, and unless the character studies and musings on male/female relationships in a phallocentric society are enough to sustain your interest, you are bored out of your mind. There are some events in the finale of the book where Tenar sort of accidentally contributes to saving the land from a new evil, but they're hardly connected to the rest of the novel and feel ridiculously-forced and rushed. They could easily be described as deus ex machina, by a cynical reviewer. So I guess I'm saying that, since I'm definitely cynical.

The vast bulk of the very short novel, perhaps the first 180 out of 210 pages, tell of Tenar living on her farm, walking to visit the aged and dying mage of her island, adopting and raising and protecting a horribly-scarred and abused young girl, raising her alone, living on the mage's farm after his death, and so on. It's a kitchen sink drama, basically, though there's hardly enough drama to qualify for that pejorative description. The boredom seems likely to end when Ged, the archmage of all the land arrives on dragonback, a day or two after he vanished into the sky at the conclusion of the third novel. The problem is that he's nearly dead, emptied of all power, his spirit is broken, and he can do little but herd goats, as he did in his childhood. He shows up around page 50, and does nothing but drag the mood down further, especially if you have fond memories of what a great character he was in the first 3 novels. Some reviewers have described seeing Ged as a broken, powerless, self-pitying old man as painful; almost like the death of a parent.

The novel is all well-written and has excellent character details and discussion, especially about what it's like to be female (and powerless) in a world where men hold all of the power, but since essentially nothing happens in terms of exciting plot details, it's very boring unless you are really into reading a slow, serious-lit style novel set in a fantasy world.

When I first read the novel in my teens I was bored speechless, skimmed much of it, found the ending entirely unsatisfying, and was glad LeGuin had wrapped up Earthsea after 3 novels and thought she should not have returned to it for a 4th. Reading it again in the summer of 2004, after having read the first three novels of Earthsea several times in the intervening years, I still found it very slow and poorly-paced, but I didn't dislike it. It's still no fun at all, and there are no good big bangs (the climax could have been, if it hadn't been written so quickly with the action almost off screen) to offset the glacial pace, but it's not a bad book, if you really remember and care about the characters you've come to know over the course of the first three Earthsea novels.

I can see why and how LeGuin wrote it, (largely to insert her born again feminist ideas and greater maturity into her old male-dominated world) and I can emphasize with her desire to show what happens to the characters in great sagas who don't go on to do anything amazing with their lives. She wants to explore average life as lived by once-extraordinary people, and wants a quieter character drama. The problem is that she's too successful with that, too subtle, and ends up with a rather boring novel, one unenlivened by the action and drama and character intrigue that she used to perk up the earlier novels in Earthsea and to keep the reader turning the pages. All the novels in Earthsea are quite solemn, with great responsibility and importance heaped upon every event, and I like that approach, so long as there is enough other interesting stuff to offset the very slow pace and very introspective style.  It's not really a style I search out, but a good writer can make it work, and LeGuin does. Tehanu could have done that as well, but LeGuin seems too committed to proving she can write a novel in which nothing important happens. She's written it, but whether that's a good thing or not is very open to debate.

I have not read the first 3 Earthsea novels recently enough to rate them fairly, but at some point I will do so and add reviews for them. I'm curious to see how they compare to each other, to Tehanu, and to the 5th novel in the series as well, which has to turn up the library sooner or later.