Tehanu Book Four

Oh, to be a retired a dark priestess living in a cute cottage with her dragon daughter and Archmage husband, and their GOATS! This story is scary as hell though ngl.

I read this book in a dead tree version when it first came out. I've read the first 3 books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore) multiple times. They're all lovely books. Tehanu is a little different. I mean, it's still a lovely book, just somewhat different in tone and content from others. It's a more feminist book. It focuses on Tenar, the protagonist of The Tombs of Atuan, and her life after leaving her life as an Eaten One. Tenar adopts a child that had been injured and scarred in a fire by her "guardians." She's with the wizard Ogion as he dies. Ged returns, injured and shaken and no longer a mage. There is a new King in the archipelago, but in spite of his reform efforts, evil and oppression still hide in hidden pockets in Re Albi. It's a good story, an angry story, specifically a story of women's anger. And women have more power than they realize, as we discover toward the end of the book. It's also one of the few books I know of where spinning is an integral part of women's work. Most of the spinning talk looks pretty good to me, except where Le Guin talks about winding yarn off the distaff. AFAIK, a distaff only holds fiber to be spun, unless there's a tradition I'm not familiar with of winding spun yarn somewhere on the distaff.

** spoiler alert ** I both loved and hated this book. Also, advanced apologies if I blur Tehanu and The Other Wind together, I read them in close succession and don't really remember where the one left off and the other started. I deeply appreciated that Le Guin's characters were not young teens in their prime having adventures, as so many fantasy novels revolve around. I appreciated their strengths their weaknesses and the seasons of their lives. I am glad we have had a chance to read about Ged and Tenar as older individuals. I also appreciated Therru/Tehanu's character. That said, the pacing of the book is rather slow...which I guess could be said of most of Le Guin's books, but it didn't bother me much until I was a few books deep into her works, because she uses language that is just such a joy to read. Le Guin just doesn't do action very well. It's not her speed. She will spend an entire book building up to a single paragraph or sentence of great calamity and action, and resolve it just as quickly and neatly. Sometimes resolution comes so quickly after the long build up I felt like I had blinked and missed it, or else gotten whiplash from it coming and going so quickly. I was a little saddened that Ged so resolutely refused to see Lebannon again, given how much Lebannon cared for Ged. To an extent I understood Ged's desicion, but at the same time it struck me as a little cruel. I was also frustrated by Therru. There was all this foreshadowing and build up to Therru having all this potential and strength and power and yet...it amounts to nothing. For heaven sake's they call her The Woman Of Gont! You think that would mean something! Therru, both in this book and Other Wind ends up being a bit of a fizzle. Tehanu never really does anything in any of the novels and I was rather disappointed by this. Even in the scenes where she is supposedly flexing her power or coming into herself, she doesn't really do much beyond following other characters around. since we never really have any story from her perspective, we don't even get the satisfaction of her development as a character through her evolution of thoughts and emotions. At best she acts kind of mysterious, with hidden potential never really seen, at worst she is just an indecisive, quiet, sort of mopey, socially awkward girl who has some really famous and powerful friends. Most frustrating of all, there was SO. MUCH. Build up to a great big showdown. Either between Therru and Aspen, or at the very least Kalessin and Aspen. Instead, after reading the entire book and getting led on...Le Guin gives me a single sentence in which all the build up to a showdown is resolved without any hubbub at all. It was comically anticlimactic. After everything! And it is resolved by a dragon sitting on the villians...almost incidentally and unnoticed simply because the dragon heard Therru's call and wanted to come over to say hi. So yeah. Both loved and hated this book. Still worth a read, but it frustrated me.

It took me a bit to acclimate to how different this story is but once I did I think I appreciate it more. There is a heavy depth and exploration I’ve not seen in fantasy in this; steeped in a perspective never quite articulated and unkempt. There are many questions and little definitive answers and I enjoyed discovering Tehanu and Tenar. Ged is more realized and more manly, truly growing up. Bow that he is “empty”, he can fill himself with something more substantial or substantive than this wizardly power that possessed his life. This is no “and then they lived happily ever after”, yet is some of that. Instead there is a joy in discovering the magic of being with and giving yourself to someone else, as well as the pleasure of a hard days work. I may like it the most so far, as I make my way through all these stories.

i can’t choose whether this or the tombs of atuan was my favourite earthsea book. but i loved seeing tenar again, and i adored tehanu—both the book and the character. it’s a story that will stay with me for a while.

Sublime, ma chronique à venir très vite ! Un tome merveilleux !

i understand why people might have hated this book, but i don't agree with the sentiment. judging this book without taking into account the context in which it was written would be utterly unfair. this book came out 30 years ago. three decades ago, society was completely different from what it is today. for that time, this book must have been ground-breaking and yet to see so many just dismiss it because it tried to impose a 'feminist agenda' or that it delves into a discourse that today in 2020 would be repetitive is not seeing the full picture. in ursula's words: “What cannot be mended must be transcended.” 'Maybe the change coming into Earthsea has something to do with no longer identifying freedom with power, with separating being free from being in control. There is a kind of refusal to serve power that isn’t a revolt or a rebellion, but a revolution in the sense of reversing meanings, of changing how things are understood. Anyone who has been able to break from the grip of a controlling, crippling belief or bigotry or enforced ignorance knows the sense of coming out into the light and air, of release, being set free to fly, to transcend. 'It’s not surprising that Tehanu was labeled “feminist.” But the word is used so variously that it’s worse than useless. If you see feminism as vindictive prejudice against men, the label lets you dismiss the book unread; if you see feminism as a belief in superior properties unique to women and expect the book to confirm that belief, you’ll find it equivocal.' anyways, we stan ursula k le guin for breaking the mold and making men cry for daring to have a female heroine save the day and for the hero, powerless, to finally sit back and watch.

Warto było przemęczyć się przez poprzednie trzy części, żeby przeczytać tę jedną. To piękna dojrzała opowieść o doświadczonych ludziach, ich wzajemnych relacjach, młodości i starości, społeczeństwie, niepełnosprawności, wychowaniu, strachu, zaufaniu i miłości. A także o sielankowym życiu, które zakłócają niespodziewane wydarzenia.