Tehanu

Book Title: Tehanu

Author: Ursula Le Guin

Series: Earthsea Cycle #4

Date Started: January 4th 2024

Date Completed: January 12th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Ursula Le Guin's stories are truly something else. Engaging and exciting, even with such an unconventional plot structure, Tehanu continues the Earthsea Cycle (written several years after the original three books) in a confident sweep of grand and yet quiet magic.

The first three books are wonderful (particularly the Tombs of Atuan, which of course meant this revisiting of Tenar's story would be magical), and yet Tehanu is poignantly distinct. We've had epic odysseys and dramatic battles of good versus evil, but what comes after? When the hero is wounded, who do they go to to heal? And perhaps that person they go to is the hero all along. This fourth instalment is a most beautiful, thoughtful and fierce feminist piece - which acknowledges various points of view and doesn't pass judgment, but finds some universal balance and equality that so many flail trying to construct and therefore miss altogether.

As a contemporary reader, having experienced the waves of feminism through literature in my life, there is a whispered might in Le Guin's storytelling. She doesn't have to say Tenar is just as powerful as Ged on the page, or even have Tenar so self-assured of it herself. Her actions, her history, and her day-to-day strength when even the great archmage is cowered make the reader know it.

Old-fashioned epic fantasy has such a good grasp of time and space - making villages and adventures and creatures like dragons feel truly giant and life-size to the reader. As fantasy, particularly high fantasy, has evolved I feel it's become richer in descriptions and deliberate worldbuilding (we'll give a pass to Tolkien and his obsession with every damn tree in a forest), but has then started to lose this assumed suspension of disbelief. Le Guin doesn't need to describe how anything magical fits into her world because it just does, it only needs a passing comment. Furthermore, Tehanu's ties to the earlier books enhance the vividity of the story but also goes to show how vast Earthsea as a world is. This story is so far removed from the original three and yet is playing out somewhere in the distance. Such diversity and distinction exist in the real world, they don't have to be meticulously tied with perfect strings to each other as modern readers have come to expect.

As an afterthought, I also want to mention the Complete Illustrated Edition I'm working my way through. Not only are the illustrations from Charles Vess desperately beautiful, but this edition also comes along with commentary from Le Guin looking back on her novels. The novels themselves are great, but her afterwards are really something else. Her retrospective reflections on what she was doing, what was motivating her, and even the world's reactions, are so poignant and enhance the whole experience of reading the stories. In such a down-to-earth way, the mother of fantasy takes her biggest bow.