Reviews with content warning for Torture - Tehanu

This book. Oh my god. Ursula Le Guin might as well just take my whole heart now. It would just be a formality. She already owns it.

Just like all of the other Earthsea books, I adored this one. I've always wanted to find a gripping story about heroes dealing with the psychological aftermath AFTER the conflict is over... And Tehanu delivered. It was such a book of healing and still reflection and love in action, which I guess my heart needed because it made me cry. A lot. I've become so attached to these characters and getting to spend time with them simply going about their lives and supporting each other was balm for the soul. Tenar and Ged are two of my favorite characters of all time. Just so strong and wise in the gentlest way. And Tenar's rage in this book was a joy to read, the power of a kind woman's anger burning off the page like dragon fire. And her relationship with Therru cut straight to the heart.

Le Guin's amazing prose seems lifted from Earthsea itself, a scintillating world where words have extraordinary power. Something about the way she writes hits me so hard, and I found myself stopping many times to reread passages and let the profundity sink in.

This is my kind of book, y'all. Whatever that says about me, I'll take it. Some parts pained me, some parts gave me joy, but I savored it all. I know it's a divisive book among Earthsea readers, but the things about it that I've seen criticized are the things I love most about it. The quietness, the slice of life, the long conversations by the fireside about life and power punctuated by mundane chores, the revelations about how condescendingly women are treated by even the most revered citizens of Earthsea, Ged finding his rocky way in his new non-magic identity. And Ged learning what it is to be afraid of humans for the first time in his life except for when he was a boy. It's raw and honest. It holds no punches.

The three main characters are all dealing with loss and trauma in this book. Ged lost his wizarding powers in saving Earthsea from corruption in the last book, and like we all do in life, has to grapple with the grief of losing something irreplaceable to him. Tenar has lost people she's loved, watched them die or leave her recently, sending her reeling into a new life of starting over again. The emotional and physical wounds little Therru has sustained keep her locked in fear and reticence. And the beautiful thing is that though they've all lost so much, they find powers within themselves that have nothing to do with magic, and slowly through time and careful testing steps, start to rediscover what it means to live on their own terms, and find solace through the deep love and trust they have for each other.

The kind and healing parts of the book come into sharp relief with the immense cruelty that is always hovering on the edges of the story. It makes the gentleness of the protagonists feel extra vulnerable and sacred, which is just a gorgeous contrast.

But as brilliant as it is, I have several gripes with this story:

1) the ending.

I hated the ending. The misogyny and violence up until this point has been hinted at but not blatantly shown. It was pushed too far and was jarring and excessive, and perhaps this was Le Guin's intention, to make us uncomfortable in the helplessness of realizing how violent and cruel the world can be, but it really knocked my love for the book temporarily from 5 stars to 1, because it unravels the message of the entire book. Heck, the entire series has had the recurring theme of how magical powers aren't all that important compared to who you are as a person. Tenar and Ged have been growing, growing, growing, and then in this chapter they are knocked flat and cannot help each other and need rescuing. The deus ex machina was not a satisfying conclusion to me at all. Then comes an anticlimactic ending where Ged asks a question I wanted them to talk about more but he promptly falls asleep. Tenar and Therru share a sweet moment, but for a book that's spent its entire pages dealing with the aftermath of traumatic events for its characters, it felt so abrupt to just end it after new humiliating trauma has been levied against them without unpacking how it affected them and letting them heal some more.

2) the binary presentation of the genders. I loved the feminist discussions for what they were -- flawed people giving their opinions and letting the reader sift out the meaning through the lens of the speaker's life experiences that shaped their perspective. But it was still presented in a very "men are this way, women are another way" message, and that's something I take issue with since gender is a spectrum and is far more varied and nuanced than that. (Not to mention that Ged and Tenar's story literally proved how similar they were in character and inner strength despite the massively different lives they've led, regardless of gender.) I know this book was written 30 years ago, so a binary viewpoint is to be expected. But it still bothered me. Tenar did push back a little with her sly questions about "are we really THAT different?" But it wasn't strong enough of a pushback IMO.

3) the villain was so unnecessary. Out of place, one-note, boring, not part of the plot in any meaningful way except to provoke the plot twist at the very end. He shouldn't have even been there and the book would have been stronger for it in my opinion. The only good thing about him was that

it gave Tenar the opportunity to drop this scathing line: "No. I don't understand men like you at all." CHILLS.

4) this won't be relatable for everyone, but as someone who falls on the aro/ace spectrum... A little part of me was sad when

the book makes a big deal about Ged not being ace anymore. As if it's universal for everyone to want sex and feel sexual attraction, as if asexuality is something that only exists when forced upon you because of external factors rather than just another perfectly natural way of being. It's a common misconception that asexuality must be a result of trauma or repression, and this storyline played right into that. In my head I'm just going to go on believing all those years Ged was ace were because he really was ace. He had way more important things he'd rather think about! But in truth these were the least sickening love scenes I've maybe ever read because their platonic respect for each other was already so strong, and it makes me happy that he and Tenar find happiness in a way that works for them. They deserve it after all they've been through. So it's okay, it just made me sad about the loss of an amazing ace character.

Overall, this book absolutely floored me. It changes in tone a bit from the previous Earthsea books, it's still reflective but rather than travelling and having adventures, it's focused on home life. The deeper inner life questions that the previous books focused on are still present here, but ironically the scope of this smaller scale book felt more global, as the main antagonizing force was how prejudice and misogyny are perpetuated most often by everyday people. It took the inner reflection and philosophy Earthsea is known for and turned half of the lenses outwards, to examine society itself and using magic as a sort of metaphor for how power is distributed in society.

This book is going to be on my mind a long, long time, I can already tell. There were many specific parts I loved, but this review is already too long so I'll end it here!

EDIT: one more thing that bugs me about this book!

Ged never makes contact with Lebannen. Not even once. In the beginning, I can accept that because he's reeling from recovery. Who wants to attend a coronation in a big city while depressed? (Although Ged made Tenar go to Havnor after her world turned upside down and she lost everything so... It would have been poetic justice.) But the fact that he didn't do a thing by the end of the book to repair his relationship really disappoints me. He could have just sent a letter! "Hey Leb, I'm really proud of you." It would have made Lebannen's whole life to get those words. As it is, Ged is treating him like he wants nothing more to do with him... because he lost his mage power... which Lebannen has never had in the first place and feels somewhat insecure about that. In any case, Lebannen is way more mature than Ged in this story and it is a weird shift. Maybe that's part of the point, that Ged is human, and humans are flawed and do the wrong thing all the time for their own reasons, and we're passing the torch to the new generation. I think I could have accepted that, even, if we'd been SHOWN some of those reasons! But to me it doesn't feel like Ged has really healed or embraced his new life yet by the end because he never made this right and the book never addressed it. Also, maybe I'd accept that for a different character, but this is GED we're talking about. He's no stranger to coming through death or being physically weak or rising above his circumstances with wisdom and kindness. His biggest character strengths are how thoroughly human he is and how incredibly encouraging he is to the people he's mentoring. So him not contacting Lebannen feels like a drop down in his growth.

It's a testament to how much I loved Tehanu that I'm still giving it such a high rating even with all my gripes, haha. It's just THAT good.

Content Warnings

conspystery's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was so good, I wrote a final paper on it completely unprompted. Tehanu is definitely one of my favorites in the Earthsea series, and maybe out of all books.

I love how Le Guin presents and examines identity in Earthsea, and Tehanu makes that its central concern. In a world where power, gender, and identity are so closely entwined, the distinctions between them and their lived impacts on people permeate through every layer of society-- social biases, especially sexist ones, root themselves in the minds of even the most well-meaning people. Tenar is a wonderful character through whom to explore these themes. Even though she herself is intimately familiar with the variance of identity (as the text reminds us, quite cleverly, by switching between the names Goha and Ar-ha and Tenar), she still internalizes biases against women and projects them onto those around her. Ged does much the same in this novel. Tehanu is Tenar’s journey to deconstructing those biases and embracing her identities as a woman.

How Le Guin communicates that journey, through a slow-paced narrative with an often cleverly quotidian yet hunted tone, is phenomenal. For me, this was the most immersive book of Earthsea because of Tenar’s inner monologue (and the moments where it breaks from that were all the more interesting for it.) The plot felt grounded in the reality of its world, whereas previous books like A Wizard of Earthsea felt to me more like a recounting of an epic. Which is also amazing! One of my favorite things about the first book is how much it feels like an epic legend, and the same holds up for The Farthest Shore and even The Tombs of Atuan, to an extent. But Tehanu feels different, in an equally amazing way.

I annotated this book while reading it for recurring images, and what I found was extremely satisfying: there are a lot of opposite motifs, like heat and cold, fire and water, light and dark. I absolutely loved the emphasis on these opposites. The Tombs of Atuan obviously had a lot of light and dark imagery (Ged’s speech to Tenar about being “made to hold light” is one of my favorite pieces of writing ever), and so seeing it echoed in Tehanu was so fitting for Tenar’s character-- and seeing how it applied to Therru’s character was genuinely fascinating to me.

Therru

herself is a contradiction in Earthsea’s society. She occupies opposing roles. She’s a victim of violent assault, a curious youth, Tenar’s daughter, a force of immense power, born of dragons, a girl: in the power structure of Earthsea’s society, these things cannot be true at once. She opposes herself, breaks the rules, forces the people around her to confront the dissonance in their worldviews… just like the repeated opposing images. When she’s given her true name at the end, Tehanu, Tenar realizes the coalescence of her daughter’s identity, finally understanding that she is multifaceted rather than contradictory. And so is every woman, and man, and person, and dragon in Earthsea.

It’s a powerful, meaningful sentiment, and Le Guin communicates it much more beautifully than I just did. Please read this book.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Le Guin is unparalleled. Tehanu is phenomenal, almost mythological in its implications, and I truly think it’s one of the best in the series. I love it.

Content Warnings

gwendle_vs_literature's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Le Guin’s writing in this series is poetic. The style reminds me of Beowulf: the Story is more important than the plot or the characters (although the plot and characters are certainly there).

Content Warnings