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Title: Tehanu : The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 0-689-84533-2 Publisher: Simon Pulse Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.22 (108 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not terrible, but not that great...
Comment: I am loath to compare this book to the rest of Earthsea, because it was written so much later, and from a different perspective. I was excited to find that Tenar was the main character, and that the book was written from her very personal perspective. It was hopeful at a refreshing break from the male-dominated plots of the first three books.
I was, however, somewhat disappointed. The idea was a great one: to show that women, too, have a place in the world of power and magery, but that their power is different. My main problem with "Tehanu," though, is how long it took for Le Guin to make this point. Most of the book could have been summarized in a two or three dozen pages, while still maintaining the very personal and emotional exploration of Tenar's life. Furthermore, I felt a bit lost as to exactly what point Le Guin was trying to make--we saw very little actual strength or power exercised by the women in the story. Indeed, near the end, we see that the male still has much more power than even the witch next door.
My other main problem was with the end, which seemed completely incongruous with the rest of the story, as well as confusing. I don't want to spoil anything for new readers, so I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say that I put down the book feeling confused as to exactly what Therru's role was, and why she was "given" her other name. Further, was the power exercised at the end the power of women as a group, or just this one particularly special girl...who might not have been a girl, at all?
Le Guin is a fantastic author, so I felt like this book could have been so much more.
Rating: 2
Summary: Is LeGuin tired of writing?
Comment: I can accept the plot inconsistancies with the previous books in the "trilogy." I can accept her vague style of writing. I like her ideas and think they have potential. But I would have thought that, with the passage of time, her writing would improve. Unfortunately, not only does it not improve, it actually seems to have deteriorated. She spends the first 90% or more of the book developing the background, then rushes through the plot development and the climax (if it can be called such) in just a few pages, as if she were sick of the story and of writing in general and just wanted to get it done with. What a shame.
Rating: 5
Summary: Women's Magic
Comment: For two decades, Ursula Le Guin's landmark EARTHSEA cycle was considered a trilogy. The surprise publication of a fourth novel in 1990, TEHANU, generated expansive critical acclaim and represents Le Guin's courageous and brilliant feminist deconstruction of her own fantasy masterwork.
Tenar of the Ring, priestess-heroine of THE TOMBS OF ATUAN, has become a middle-aged farmer's widow, who abandoned both wordly fame and the promise of esoteric power for 'a man, children, life'. Those children grown, she adopts an abused girl, Therru, and later the responsibility of caring for the archmage Ged. Ged, having defeated a great evil which threatened all Earthsea, has returned from the lands of death, as related in THE FARTHEST SHORE, but has lost his magecraft and potentially his will to live. The course of the story reveals a shining destiny for burned Therru and the tender budding of a relationship between Tenar and Ged.
While direct statements in TEHANU of the feminist agenda are a little heavyhanded, the gentle unfolding of the world of feminine experience through Tenar's activities is moving and perceptive: the ceaseless 'women's work', the harmony of feminine companionship, the joys and fears of motherhood and the bitter acknowledgement that women must always be conscious of 'doors locked' against the violence of men.
The consummation of Tenar and Ged's relationship was for me the climax of the novel, and as powerful a landmark in Ged's journey towards self-knowledge as naming his own shadow in THE WIZARD OF EARTHSEA. The wizardly denial of sexuality, and of the worth of women, must end for Ged with the loss of his power, and he makes a halting progress to Tenar's side and to reclaiming the selfhood and masculine identity he believed poured away with his power. The 'Song of Ea' proclaims: 'In silence, the word...in death, life'. Le Guin adds now that only through acceptance of woman can man be found - and vice versa.
Le Guin has always been a writer who challenges, who believes implicitly that one of fantasy's most vital functions is precisely that - to challenge. 'Tehanu' is the name of a star which Tenar, claiming the power of Naming hoarded by men throughout the earlier Earthsea novels, discovers to be also Therru's True Name. TEHANU is a bright beacon for modern fantastists prompting them to re-examine their motives for reading and writing fantasy - do we search out fantasy to liberate ourselves, to reveal truths about our real world, or is it a reactive, conservative, destructive urge all too often valorising patriarchal ethics system which exclude women and women's magic?
TEHANU's conclusion is a little abrupt and unsatisfying, raising more questions than it answers: why do men fear women, why must power for one must be gained through disempowering others, would breaking the hegemony of mages be good for Earthsea, can two natures can exist in one body? Thankfully, THE OTHER WIND, the latest Earthsea novel, continues the mighty task Le Guin has set herself and begins answering some of those questions.
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Title: Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 0441009328 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 044100993X Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 0441478123 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 0441008631 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin ISBN: 0061054887 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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