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When Sparrowhawk, the Archmage of Earthsea, returns from the dark land stripped of his magic powers, he finds refuge with the aging widow Tenar and a crippled girl child who carries an unknown destiny.Tags
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When I finished my reread of The Farthest Shore, it was obvious to me that there needed to be a fourth Earthsea book to continue Tenar's story and pass it to a next generation and a new form of power, just as the third book had done for Ged. So it was no surprise to me when Le Guin claimed in her 2012 afterword to Tehanu that she had begun that work straight away after finishing The Farthest Shore. But it took her eighteen years to write, because it demanded more acquired perspective. In The Farthest Shore, the viewpoint passes to the young Arren immediately, and he carries it through the book, but in Tehanu, it is still Tenar who serves as the viewpoint character for the first thirteen chapters, and Le Guin needed more of her own show more "ordinary, unmagical life" (271) to explain Tenar's experiences to herself and the reader.
Publishers were no doubt happy with the incomplete work that could be sold as a "trilogy," and while Tehanu won the 1990 Nebula award for best novel, it has been frequently noted as a marked turn from the earlier Earthsea books, rather than their natural fulfillment, as it seemed to me in my recent reading. The diction was consistent with the earlier books, and it constantly returned to their themes and expressions. Perhaps a sticking point for some readers was the fact that it overtly addressed not only sex but the patent fact that sex had been sublimated in the earlier books.
An occultist magician will easily read these first four Earthsea tales as an elaboration of the formula of Tetragrammaton, expressed in Ged/yod, Tenar/heh, Lebannen/vau, and Tehanu/heh. The story of the Woman of Kemay (13-15) intimates the shin to be added to the formula. This nested tale brought my attention back to Michael Moorcock's recent Elric book The Citadel of Forgotten Myths, and its emphasis on an ancestry shared by humans (well, Elric's people) and dragons. It seems likely that Moorcock was influenced by Tehanu on this count, even if not consciously so.
I do feel a strong sense of completion in Tehanu, and I will pause before moving on to the short stories collected in Tales of Earthsea. The texts so far have given me confidence that Le Guin's later fantasies will continue to inquire gracefully into "who we are, and where our wholeness lies" (16). show less
Publishers were no doubt happy with the incomplete work that could be sold as a "trilogy," and while Tehanu won the 1990 Nebula award for best novel, it has been frequently noted as a marked turn from the earlier Earthsea books, rather than their natural fulfillment, as it seemed to me in my recent reading. The diction was consistent with the earlier books, and it constantly returned to their themes and expressions. Perhaps a sticking point for some readers was the fact that it overtly addressed not only sex but the patent fact that sex had been sublimated in the earlier books.
An occultist magician will easily read these first four Earthsea tales as an elaboration of the formula of Tetragrammaton, expressed in Ged/yod, Tenar/heh, Lebannen/vau, and Tehanu/heh. The story of the Woman of Kemay (13-15) intimates the shin to be added to the formula. This nested tale brought my attention back to Michael Moorcock's recent Elric book The Citadel of Forgotten Myths, and its emphasis on an ancestry shared by humans (well, Elric's people) and dragons. It seems likely that Moorcock was influenced by Tehanu on this count, even if not consciously so.
I do feel a strong sense of completion in Tehanu, and I will pause before moving on to the short stories collected in Tales of Earthsea. The texts so far have given me confidence that Le Guin's later fantasies will continue to inquire gracefully into "who we are, and where our wholeness lies" (16). show less
This was remarkably good. It was described to me as even more misogynistic than the original Earthsea trilogy, but it's not at all. The Earthsea first trilogy assumes and accepts an unconscious misogyny, which it therefore reinforces. But "Tehanu" drags all that woman-hating out into the open for examination, and explicitly describes a misogynistic culture which even at its best gives women very little power, and asks what the differences are between male and female power and allows the reader to see how much of this is culturally constructed, and how much of our own culture is constructed along the same lines. In the end Tenar sees a little farther than Ged does, which is not surprising, because the system gives him all his power so of show more course he will find it harder to see it. Tenar, who is disempowered, naturally sees more clearly. But even she takes a long time to see. And it's a love story between two people whose gender-based culturally-constructed sources of power are now gone, and so have to come up with new rules, which I thought was great.
And then there's the magical part, where the raped, beaten, burned, disfigured and nearly murdered 8 year old girl turns out to be the very powerful, extremely magically powerful dragonlord/dragon. I loved that.
And finally there is the question we also struggle with. Ged does not want to give up his essentialist vision that men and women are fundamentally different, with different powers, and different magics, and truly powerful magic pertaining only to one sex, not just because his is the sex that gets to have all the power, but also because otherwise, he is afraid that nobody will have any power, and all the magic will be gone.
But isn't that exactly what we all fear? The loss of all the magic, if we throw away the vessels that traditionally hold it? Le Guin goes a long way here to explaining why we're afraid to let go of social systems even when they clearly aren't working for most of the people they affect. show less
And then there's the magical part, where the raped, beaten, burned, disfigured and nearly murdered 8 year old girl turns out to be the very powerful, extremely magically powerful dragonlord/dragon. I loved that.
And finally there is the question we also struggle with. Ged does not want to give up his essentialist vision that men and women are fundamentally different, with different powers, and different magics, and truly powerful magic pertaining only to one sex, not just because his is the sex that gets to have all the power, but also because otherwise, he is afraid that nobody will have any power, and all the magic will be gone.
But isn't that exactly what we all fear? The loss of all the magic, if we throw away the vessels that traditionally hold it? Le Guin goes a long way here to explaining why we're afraid to let go of social systems even when they clearly aren't working for most of the people they affect. show less
This book isn't necessarily an attempt to recapture greatness, but it is by no means an attempt to further and enrich the world of Earthsea. And despite how a great many reviewers and critics laud this book for its feminism, it turns out that the book is not very feminist at all. The women in Tehanu may speak
Now, I can't take the full credit for this insight. Something bothered me when I noticed that Ged had to come to Tenar's rescue at the end (despite her being capable of defending herself in that moment), and I also wondered why Tenar didn't have much ambition or agency outside of protecting the novel's chosen one, but once I read this essay, the truth hit me like a ton of hay. What could've been Le Guin's purpose by entertaining changes in gender roles but then deciding to have her characters remain in those same roles?
As evidenced by the initial appearance of Tenar in the second book, Le Guin has shown that she can write a good story about female empowerment and the realities of being a woman in a society rife with sexist tenets. The God-king and priestesses of Atuan only allowed Tenar to have dominion over falsehoods--"power over" (as Le Guin calls it in the afterword of Tombs of Atuan) through fear and bigotry, versus "power to"--possessing a realistic, humanistic view of the world through knowledge and understanding. Tenar was kept from the "dark art" of reading, but was encouraged by Ged to read, and was taken in at Roke to further develop her power. Why, then, did Le Guin have Tenar leave Roke and become a farmer's wife? It's implied she experienced sexism at Roke, but why did she turn her back on her magic powers entirely? Couldn't she have taken a different life path?
Of course, that's not to say that a female character who becomes a mother or caretaker is weak or bad, but Tenar isn't defined by much in Tehanu besides her role as a widowed caretaker. When Ged enters the picture as a downtrodden and pitiful man without magic, he ends up becoming Tenar's love interest despite how little he has to offer her as an individual, and he ends up becoming the person that gives her life more meaning again. Tenar also falls into dire situations just to motivate Ged and have him become a traditionally masculine character--to evolve past Tenar and become a desirable hero.
This is all very clichéd stuff, the kind of stuff that I thought was beneath Le Guin. Perhaps the most obvious and laughable cliché of the book is the Straw Misogynist villain, a man so cartoonishly vile and immature that he fails to be truly imposing. His fate (death) is sealed by deus ex machina, and so he serves his purpose as a misogynistic effigy to be burned and triumphed over. But the victory comes too easily, only to be followed by the continual erasure of Tenar's agency.
Compare this to the ending of The Tombs of Atuan. While Tenar also decides to go with Ged, and while Ged does aid her in escaping, Tenar is encouraged to read, to become educated at Roke, and to seek her own sort of power beyond that of her previous, untenable life. When the cultish Atuan comes crashing down, it is a symbolic victory well earned, as there was a genuine struggle taking place within Tenar: whether to give in to the fear and brainwashing, or rebel and forge a better path for herself. Although Le Guin did say that she couldn't give Tenar "a man's agency," Tenar still had her own form of agency, and acted on it, possessing the inner strength to eventually move forward on her own. It's odd how Ged was once in favor of giving "power to" Tenar, but in Tehanu, he suddenly talks of "power over" her. Is this not a contradiction? Or was it so engrained in Roke--and unquestioned by us--that it wasn't apparent until now?
What Le Guin has to say about Ged in the afterword is interesting: "Some readers who identified with Ged as a male power figure thought I’d betrayed and degraded him in some sort of feminist spasm of revenge. So far as I know, I had no spasms and didn’t betray Ged. Quite the opposite, I think. In Tehanu he can become, finally, fully a man. He is no longer the servant of his power."
Well, he is somewhat degraded, but he ascends into a traditionally masculine role throughout the book, and resultingly becomes a hero in Tenar's eyes. He's no longer the servant of his magical power, but he does become the servant of societal power, though not in a way that makes him a better character for it.
Le Guin follows up in the afterword with more of her reasoning behind writing Tehanu:
"In both The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu, books in which women are central to the story, there’s a kind of anger which I don’t think is in A Wizard or The Farthest Shore. It’s the anger of the underdog, fury against social injustice, the vengeful rage women have too often been made to feel. I’d finally learned to acknowledge such anger in myself and to try to express it without injustice. So Ged the Archmage could be grandly serene as he paralyzed pirates with a wave of his staff, but Ged the goatherd in blind fury uses a pitchfork on his enemy. And so Aspen, the wizard of Re Albi, is detestable in a way even Cob is not, because Aspen flaunts all the behaviors that cause such anger—fear and loathing of women, the arrogance of the powerful, and the sick human lust to dominate that leads to endless cruelty."
We can then view this book as a cathartic victory for Le Guin, but it's a victory that comes too easily due to contrivances. And gender norms in Earthsea are, in fact, reinforced and upheld by Tenar, Ged, Therru, and others. Tenar herself is a weak character with little agency, lacking any sort of compelling motivation outside of taking care of Ged and Therru. Despite all of Le Guin's symbolic attempts to depict a society in transition--a society whose power structure is shifting away from men--it is, from all appearances, a facade.
This review also offers a lot of insight into Tehanu's problems, mainly that there was never a definite cultural reason established for why women are excluded from Roke, and that the magic of Earthsea was "founded on understanding the power that is inherent in true names and Equilibrium, or in other words, on an understanding of the essence of the world/nature." And although Le Guin does acknowledge that she weakened Ged in order to make a point about men's power, how good can this point be if Ged suddenly loses all of the "accumulated wisdom and lessons that he'd learned and demonstrated throughout the previous books"?
Beyond Tehanu's conceptual failings, its structure is sporadic and filled with minutiae that renders the book mundane and plodding. Tenar's style of expression is too on the nose, and her tendency to overanalyze is ineffectual at creating good narrative tension. I also couldn't tell sometimes whether it was Le Guin or Tenar talking, which I take as the sign of an inexperienced or uncertain writer, or simply a writer that has gotten too caught up in their own message. And this is the first Le Guin book I've read that's condescending and unsubtle, which is unlike her.
This is ultimately a story about characters figuring out their place in an unstable, decaying society, but neither the plot nor the writing comes together in a cogent, skillful, and subtle way. Le Guin says that she struggled for over a decade to write this book, and it shows. What I've gathered from interviews and the novel's afterword is that she felt it was imperative for her to write Tehanu, as she would have stopped writing altogether if it had remained unfinished. Be that as it may, it's a mess of a story, contradictory and tough to get through. I suppose it's what you'd expect from a novel that spent a decade in creative limbo, though it would be difficult for anyone to write a novel over the course of a decade and have it be excellent and consistent (unless your name is Susanna Clarke).
Well, Le Guin is certainly capable of better writing, so I hope the final two Earthsea books end up being a return to form. And I hear that The Left Hand of Darkness features a much better exploration/deconstruction of gender, so I eagerly look forward to reading that one, too.
'Weak as womens' magic' was a flaw in Earthsea, right there in the first pages, and in light of that flaw, what was seen as balance was merely status quo. Tehanu seeks to address that flaw, with Tenar living the life of an ordinary woman, a farmer's widow, a murder, a carer for a damaged little girl, friend of a dying wizard, nurse to an Archmage stripped of his power, dogged by the malignant hatred of men, even, in the end, heartbreakingly subject to the internalised misogyny and entitlement of her own son. So what is the change that has come to Earthsea, and where is the power of women?
"But in time nothing can be without becoming."
Surpassing the previous three Earthsea novels in its thematic content and maturity, "Tehanu" is a very adult book played out in a fantasy world already familiar to us. Rather than traveling around, the main characters travel through the trials of life, harsh trauma, and inevitable change. Grittier and more satisfying than prior Earthsea tales, this one demonstrates Le Guin's growth as an author and experiences as a person over the two decades since writing "The Farthest Shore." Great stuff.
Surpassing the previous three Earthsea novels in its thematic content and maturity, "Tehanu" is a very adult book played out in a fantasy world already familiar to us. Rather than traveling around, the main characters travel through the trials of life, harsh trauma, and inevitable change. Grittier and more satisfying than prior Earthsea tales, this one demonstrates Le Guin's growth as an author and experiences as a person over the two decades since writing "The Farthest Shore." Great stuff.
Tehanu is the most challenging of the Earthsea books so far, a story of maturity and redemption rather than youth and power.
We catch up with Tenar. After the events of The Tombs of Atuan, Tenar went to Gont, lived with the wizard Ogion for a year, and then lived an ordinary life. She became the Goodwife Goha, had children, and then became the Widow Goha when her husband died. The story begins with her taking in a horribly burned and abused girl, who she names Therru. Therru was maimed by a group of rogues that included her mother and father, pushed into a fire and left to die. Her scarred half-face and fused hand attest to damage that will never heal. After this introduction, Ogion summons Tenar to his hut as he dying. Tenar witness the show more old wizard pass, and then Ged returns on the back of a dragon, no longer Archmage after the events of The Farthest Shore, and almost dead himself.
In a lot of respects, this is an awkward and non-traditional story. Tenar spends a lot of it powerless. Fairly so in the cases of Therru, Ged, and Ogion, all of whom have suffered wounds no one can heal. But also unfairly as she deals with the sexism of Gontish society, which treats middle-aged women as adjunct beings, and with the curses of the corrupt mage working for the Lord of Re Alba, and the violence of the bandits who maimed Therru and threaten to return to finish the job. The first three quarters of the book stumbles, but the last section is a dark and fantastic return to form, and there are good bits scattered throughout.
Many critics have focused on the difference between male and female power, and the character of Auntie Moss, a witch who says that "A wizard without his power is like a nut with the meat scooped out. Is there anything left after that?" and who contrasts wizardly power by saying that her roots go deep into the dark, deeper than she knows. Le Guin, in her excellent closing essay, notes that Moss is not her authorial voice. If her true (Taoist) beliefs are in this book, it is that power is in potentiality, in the emptiness that might be filled. And that seeking after dominion in any way is a false power. show less
We catch up with Tenar. After the events of The Tombs of Atuan, Tenar went to Gont, lived with the wizard Ogion for a year, and then lived an ordinary life. She became the Goodwife Goha, had children, and then became the Widow Goha when her husband died. The story begins with her taking in a horribly burned and abused girl, who she names Therru. Therru was maimed by a group of rogues that included her mother and father, pushed into a fire and left to die. Her scarred half-face and fused hand attest to damage that will never heal. After this introduction, Ogion summons Tenar to his hut as he dying. Tenar witness the show more old wizard pass, and then Ged returns on the back of a dragon, no longer Archmage after the events of The Farthest Shore, and almost dead himself.
In a lot of respects, this is an awkward and non-traditional story. Tenar spends a lot of it powerless. Fairly so in the cases of Therru, Ged, and Ogion, all of whom have suffered wounds no one can heal. But also unfairly as she deals with the sexism of Gontish society, which treats middle-aged women as adjunct beings, and with the curses of the corrupt mage working for the Lord of Re Alba, and the violence of the bandits who maimed Therru and threaten to return to finish the job. The first three quarters of the book stumbles, but the last section is a dark and fantastic return to form, and there are good bits scattered throughout.
Many critics have focused on the difference between male and female power, and the character of Auntie Moss, a witch who says that "A wizard without his power is like a nut with the meat scooped out. Is there anything left after that?" and who contrasts wizardly power by saying that her roots go deep into the dark, deeper than she knows. Le Guin, in her excellent closing essay, notes that Moss is not her authorial voice. If her true (Taoist) beliefs are in this book, it is that power is in potentiality, in the emptiness that might be filled. And that seeking after dominion in any way is a false power. show less
OK, so I've quit procrastinating and started typing...
The first three Earthsea books were written in a relatively short space of time (published 1969-73, IIRC). They were all there when I first picked up A Wizard of Earthsea, maybe just over a decade after its initial publication - the series was complete. Let's face it, there is no requirement for a fourth book. Ged is getting old, his magic is gone, but Earthsea has a King and the Rune of Peace again. The story is over. Then, after a gap of time almost as long as I was old, Tehanu was released.
"??????!!!!!!," I said, loudly, and bought a copy. Maybe Ged gets his magic back, I thought. Maybe he sails the North Reach - or even has to go to Hogenland, I thought. Actually, he goes home, show more herds some goats and gets married. Imagine my shock! The entire book is set on Gont, there is no quest and Ged just mopes about being miserable. What a heap of rubbish.
Except, of course, this is Ursula LeGuin, so it isn't rubbish (though there are a lot of bad smells) - instead there was quiet excellence and I was being stupid, caught in the pitfall trap made by the gap between expectation and reality.
Tehanu is not epic fantasy. Tough luck. Get over it. That might take a long time, though. Every time I re-read the Earthsea books after 1990, I was tempted to just not bother with Tehanu but each time I liked it more than the previous time, until, by the time The Other Wind was released it did not occur to me skip its predecessor.
How do I feel this time round? I feel that there are the Earthsea books and there are the New Earthsea books and that Tehanu is the first of these, even though it was never planned either at the time of A Wizard of Earthsea or that two more books would come after it. The latter three books seem to be a reaction to the first three and to epic fantasy in general. Put another way, the Great Feminist Revision of Earthsea started here, though in a small, quiet way, with one woman taking in an abused child and a lost man mourning for his lost power.
The discussion of the roles of women in Archipeligan society is clearly a transposed discussion of women's roles back here in the "real" world as well as in epic fantasy generally. Tenar's position of mother, farm manager and labourer goes undervalued, hardly noticed. It may as well be called, "housewife." It's very sexist, as is the distinction between wizards (men) and witches (women). Wizards are powerful, educated, noble, wise. Witches are dirty, poor, weak and evil. Unfortunately, the wizards aren't always wise or noble; sometimes they are stupid, self-serving and nasty and if the witches are often selfish, at least they haven't been seeking immortality or breaking the natural order with their magic. When Ged and Tenar discuss this, hearing Ged spout a heap of sexist nonsense is painful. I expect better from him. He's just a victim of his education, though and it is hard to question everything you've been taught and am I any different, really? I've been brought up to believe that woman deserve respect and equal opportunity, equal reward, that child-rearing and managing a home are important and hard jobs. I didn't come to that conclusion in the face of enormous pressure to conform to the contrary.
I can now relate to Ged's situation better, too. It must be difficult to step from being the most powerful man in the world to being weaker than most, unprepared and in but a moment. It is unsurprising and natural that he should grieve for what he has lost. It is lucky for him that he finds Tenar, who gives him something different in its place: love. Their romance seems entirely natural, indeed somehow incipient in The Tombs of Atuan.
So, as usual LeGuin gives deep insight and characterisation and makes a powerful, important point, but this book only gets three stars, because of LeGuin's one weakness - the plotting. Here, the plot rambles, disappears, comes back, goes again then sort of piles up at the edge of a cliff and gets squashed under Kalessin's belly. This lack of narrative drive is the sole flaw in the book, which, thankfully, despite its themes, never deteriorates into mere male-bashing. It was an anti-climactic end to the series, though - I'm so glad that The Last Book of Earthsea turned out to be a terrible misnomer. show less
The first three Earthsea books were written in a relatively short space of time (published 1969-73, IIRC). They were all there when I first picked up A Wizard of Earthsea, maybe just over a decade after its initial publication - the series was complete. Let's face it, there is no requirement for a fourth book. Ged is getting old, his magic is gone, but Earthsea has a King and the Rune of Peace again. The story is over. Then, after a gap of time almost as long as I was old, Tehanu was released.
"??????!!!!!!," I said, loudly, and bought a copy. Maybe Ged gets his magic back, I thought. Maybe he sails the North Reach - or even has to go to Hogenland, I thought. Actually, he goes home, show more herds some goats and gets married. Imagine my shock! The entire book is set on Gont, there is no quest and Ged just mopes about being miserable. What a heap of rubbish.
Except, of course, this is Ursula LeGuin, so it isn't rubbish (though there are a lot of bad smells) - instead there was quiet excellence and I was being stupid, caught in the pitfall trap made by the gap between expectation and reality.
Tehanu is not epic fantasy. Tough luck. Get over it. That might take a long time, though. Every time I re-read the Earthsea books after 1990, I was tempted to just not bother with Tehanu but each time I liked it more than the previous time, until, by the time The Other Wind was released it did not occur to me skip its predecessor.
How do I feel this time round? I feel that there are the Earthsea books and there are the New Earthsea books and that Tehanu is the first of these, even though it was never planned either at the time of A Wizard of Earthsea or that two more books would come after it. The latter three books seem to be a reaction to the first three and to epic fantasy in general. Put another way, the Great Feminist Revision of Earthsea started here, though in a small, quiet way, with one woman taking in an abused child and a lost man mourning for his lost power.
The discussion of the roles of women in Archipeligan society is clearly a transposed discussion of women's roles back here in the "real" world as well as in epic fantasy generally. Tenar's position of mother, farm manager and labourer goes undervalued, hardly noticed. It may as well be called, "housewife." It's very sexist, as is the distinction between wizards (men) and witches (women). Wizards are powerful, educated, noble, wise. Witches are dirty, poor, weak and evil. Unfortunately, the wizards aren't always wise or noble; sometimes they are stupid, self-serving and nasty and if the witches are often selfish, at least they haven't been seeking immortality or breaking the natural order with their magic. When Ged and Tenar discuss this, hearing Ged spout a heap of sexist nonsense is painful. I expect better from him. He's just a victim of his education, though and it is hard to question everything you've been taught and am I any different, really? I've been brought up to believe that woman deserve respect and equal opportunity, equal reward, that child-rearing and managing a home are important and hard jobs. I didn't come to that conclusion in the face of enormous pressure to conform to the contrary.
I can now relate to Ged's situation better, too. It must be difficult to step from being the most powerful man in the world to being weaker than most, unprepared and in but a moment. It is unsurprising and natural that he should grieve for what he has lost. It is lucky for him that he finds Tenar, who gives him something different in its place: love. Their romance seems entirely natural, indeed somehow incipient in The Tombs of Atuan.
So, as usual LeGuin gives deep insight and characterisation and makes a powerful, important point, but this book only gets three stars, because of LeGuin's one weakness - the plotting. Here, the plot rambles, disappears, comes back, goes again then sort of piles up at the edge of a cliff and gets squashed under Kalessin's belly. This lack of narrative drive is the sole flaw in the book, which, thankfully, despite its themes, never deteriorates into mere male-bashing. It was an anti-climactic end to the series, though - I'm so glad that The Last Book of Earthsea turned out to be a terrible misnomer. show less
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Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California on October 21, 1929. She received a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College in 1951 and a master's degree in romance literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance from Columbia University in 1952. She won a Fulbright fellowship in 1953 to study in Paris, where she met and married show more Charles Le Guin. Her first science-fiction novel, Rocannon's World, was published in 1966. Her other books included the Earthsea series, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, The Lathe of Heaven, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and The Telling. A Wizard of Earthsea received an American Library Association Notable Book citation, a Horn Book Honor List citation, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. She received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014. She also received the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. She also wrote books of poetry, short stories collections, collections of essays, children's books, a guide for writers, and volumes of translation including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by Gabriela Mistral. She died on January 22, 2018 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Tehanu
- Original title
- Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
- Alternate titles*
- L'isola del drago
- Original publication date
- 1990
- People/Characters
- Ged (Sparrowhawk); Tenar (Goha); Therru; Ogion; Aunty Moss
- Important places
- Earthsea; Gont
- Related movies
- Gedo senki (2006 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.
—The Creation of Ea - First words
- After Farmer Flint of the Middle Valley died, his widow stayed on at the farmhouse.
- Quotations*
- Poza najdalszym zachodem, tam, gdzie kończą się lądy, mój lud tańczy na skrzydłach innego wiatru.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I think we can live there," she said.
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.087661
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fantasy, Fiction and Literature, Teen
- DDC/MDS
- 813.087661 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Fantasy High fantasy
- LCC
- PZ7 .L5215 .T — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
- BISAC
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