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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
lovely to see a nice character development arc for everyone involved
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Again, gorgeous prose with a story that's reasonably predictable albeit with the flourishes and social/cultural detail LeGuin does best.
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Physical abuse, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Addiction, Confinement, Mental illness, Misogyny, Violence
This is the week of making progress on some series apparently. I had The Dark Tower earlier in the week and now I finished book three of Earthsea. What a week! And then I will have more from The Witcher series to end the week. I like this trend.
I listened to the audiobook for The Farthest Shore and Rob Inglis was fantastic, as usual. He and classic fantasy are now just so thoroughly merged in my mind that I can't help but think he was the perfect narrator for this story.
What I liked.
Getting more of Ged was great. How his character has grown, how his past decisions have impacted him now in this book, and once again how this book can stand alone but also tied into the other books so well was brilliant. I don't know how Le Guin did it. And on top of that we got more heady concepts. The fading of magic, promises of eternal life through magic, a group of people who live almost entirely on the open sea, the crossing into other worlds. Now three out of the four I just mentioned I have seen done before, of course, the outlier for me being the Raft People or The Children of the Open Sea- for what I think as a better name. But all of it was done masterfully and I'm not sure I have ever taken so much away from these ideas before.
b>What I did not like.
Arren I found to be just okay in this book. I didn't connect with him for some reason. It could have something to do with me wanting to have Tenar from book two show up but alas, we can't always get what we want. And in my opinion, it is often best that I don't get what I want as a reader because it would make for a worse story.
Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I see why this series is considered a classic, certainly, and I look forward to completing it this year.
I listened to the audiobook for The Farthest Shore and Rob Inglis was fantastic, as usual. He and classic fantasy are now just so thoroughly merged in my mind that I can't help but think he was the perfect narrator for this story.
What I liked.
Getting more of Ged was great. How his character has grown, how his past decisions have impacted him now in this book, and once again how this book can stand alone but also tied into the other books so well was brilliant. I don't know how Le Guin did it. And on top of that we got more heady concepts. The fading of magic, promises of eternal life through magic, a group of people who live almost entirely on the open sea, the crossing into other worlds. Now three out of the four I just mentioned I have seen done before, of course, the outlier for me being the Raft People or The Children of the Open Sea- for what I think as a better name. But all of it was done masterfully and I'm not sure I have ever taken so much away from these ideas before.
b>What I did not like.
Arren I found to be just okay in this book. I didn't connect with him for some reason. It could have something to do with me wanting to have Tenar from book two show up but alas, we can't always get what we want. And in my opinion, it is often best that I don't get what I want as a reader because it would make for a worse story.
Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I see why this series is considered a classic, certainly, and I look forward to completing it this year.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This was just as good as the previous installments of the series, and I am very much into the King Arthur/Merlin dynamic we have established, but I'm sorry to see Ged's story go so fast. He was just a teenager, and now it's already over? It feels like getting the first and last chapters in a book and nothing in between. Hopefully that's not truly the last we see of him.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If it were just the first half of this book, I would have rated it lower and deemed it my least favorite of the series, but the last part redeems everything and is perhaps my favorite part of all. Thus it is a fitting end to the original trilogy (my having not yet read the tacked on addition, though I will now give it a try).
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A perfect book in a perfect series. I’ll be pondering on this one for a long, long time.