fuhhlarzablur 's review for:

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

5.0

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Tehanu is a very different novel to the prior trilogy, even while the continuities between them are beautifully realised. The tone of epic fantasy has largely given way to something much more concerned with economy, both of prose and in the sense of oikonomia, of householding. The leisurely wanderings of heroic mages have no place in the day-to-day hard work of farmhouse life, although beauty and splendour certainly do. Consequently reproductive labour, field work, and petty-commodity-production are the meat of this narrative, and the mighty deeds of dragons and kings drift into the periphery. The wisest men in Tehanu are the ones who pitch in around the house - without being asked. Le Guin's sharper insights as a feminist-anarchist, heretofore largely absent or buried in Earthsea, are thus core to Tehanu, and the instances of gendered violence and general misogyny encountered by the characters are often charged with a much deeper terror than the fantastical horrors of the early books.