A review by corvusastrum
Erdsee: Die erste Trilogie by Ursula K. Le Guin

3.0

It took me quite a while to get through this book, not because it’s bad per se, but the slow pacing absolutely messed with my patience. It’s not only that, but most of the time this book is more about discovering the world than the plot itself, and as much as I love world building, I do need a good story too keep my attention through it. When something relevant finally happened, it was often confusing to me because of the magic and its rules being so loose, I still don’t quite understand the magic system and its limitations. 
Despite all of this, I can’t really give this book a bad rating. The writing style is phenomenal, and the world building as a whole is really good and (a bit too) thorough. There are also some really cool ideas like the city made of boats or the religion on Atuan, and I adore the dragons. You also can’t ignore that most of the characters in all of those stories are not white, which probably was groundbreaking for the time it was written and still isn’t as common as it should be. 
All in all it's a publicly acclaimed classic for good reason, but just a bit too slow for my liking.