Rating:  -
If you're like me, you read the Earthsea books as a child, and you're revisiting this world having long been done with fairy tales. You've gone to school, read some serious literature, maybe even gotten a job or five. You've made some compromises, you've fallen in and out of love, and your life wouldn't be imaginable to the sixth-grader who breathlessly turned the pages of A Wizard of Earthsea so many years ago. That sixth-grader would be equally bewildered by Tehanu's Earthsea. Le Guin returns to her archipelago a mature writer at the height of her powers, and the story she has to tell is very different from the ones you know. But if you've made it through twenty or thirty years since you first learned of the young man who once came to Roke, you've probably picked up enough bruises and scars to appreciate her homespun tale of grief and healing.
So we return to the beginning, to the island of Gont, the wizard Ogion, and goats. Tehanu is an adult story, concerning people who are well out of their twenties, well past their glory. It's also a somber story, told against a backdrop of violence and loss. And it's a small story - a woman, her daughter, her man, and her hearth. And, much as the Patterner can hear the speech of wind and leaves, Le Guin unfolds greatness from these small and battered things.
There have been numerous complaints about this book's heavy tone. But I must remind you: the original trilogy used the bright trappings of magic and dragons to peer into the darkness. Earthsea is a morally complex place, a place where important questions are posed, though not necessarily answered. The first book taught us that the origin of evil is in ourselves; there's no easily personified embodiment of evil, no Dark Lord lurking in Mordor. Evil is as close to us as our shadows. The second book is concerns nothing so much as the loss of faith. And the third - do bear in mind it was intended for a middle-school audience - is a meditation on accepting one's own death. And now she wants her adult readers to confront one of life's hardest truths: things change.
Instead of offering us a window into the profound through a mythic framework, Le Guin shows us light, love, and laughter peering around the corners of horror and hardship. You see this most clearly in Tenar's open-armed love of the world: for her maimed adopted daughter, for Ogion, for her handicapped goatherd Heather, for the temporarily broken Ged, and even for her incorrigible goat Sippy and her loveless son Spark. But Moss takes to Terru, the young king shows compassion to all, and behind the whole story lurks the presence of Flint, who clearly loved his wife and children. At the heart of the story is Ged's slow healing, and how, in rediscovering his manhood, he leads Terru to her own strength. Since the story makes numerous allusions to weaving, I hope it won't be too much of a stretch to say that while the warp may be suffering, the weft is compassion.
This is a slow book, and a quiet one. But the emotional momentum never ceases, nor does the tension ever lag. There are remnants from everyone's history that must be addressed. Terru's abusers still roam around Gont, and while Cob may have been defeated by Ged on The Farthest Shore, the world wasn't healed all at once; damage was done, and now it must be repaired. As I said earlier, Earthsea isn't a simple place. Cob's partisans still lurk in the world, and new powers must be invoked to purge them. This is, essentially, a novel about how good women and men (and there are most certainly good men in this novel), make the world a better place by allowing one another to play to their strengths, and leaning on one another when they are weak.
The characters have many difficult conversations, in which men and women confront issues of gender and power that they lack the perspective or education to adequately frame. The characters' ignorance should not be confused with the author's. Moss may be limited by her vocabulary, Ged by his indoctrination, and Tenar by her experience, but their dialogues are provocative and open-ended. It would be facile to mistake Moss's diatribes for the author's agenda: Le Guin makes it clear that Moss is a simple mind, struggling within the confines of her gender and profession. To ask what men and women fear from one another is not the same thing as making sweeping generalizations, and those who take any character as speaking for or against the author are simply not reading carefully. Her characters are not mouthpieces; they are voices in a deeply personal debate. Many have complained that such issues don't belong in Earthsea, or in fantasy at all. But if you pick up a Le Guin novel looking for escapism, you're always going to be disappointed.
Tehanu also bucks genre conventions by questioning the "ever after." In 1972, we know Ged returned to Roke on the back of a dragon, powerless. He was in his prime at the time, no more than 50. What happens to a hero whose saga failed to kill him? Are we simply to dispose of him, forget him? Le Guin is reluctant to forget the man, once his great deeds are done. In fact, she's resistant to the idea that herding the goats, washing the dishes, and caring for a wounded child aren't Great Deeds in their own way.
My only complaints would be a bit of trouble with pacing and that the ending is too quickly, too easily, and too enigmatically resolved. Terru's (Tehanu's) nature is left unexplained, and there's far too much action packed into the last twenty pages of what has been, up to this point, a pensive novel. There's also the problem of Le Guin's stilted dialogue, but that's endemic to her body of work. One either forgives it or doesn't, and I long ago decided I could live with her tin ear for speech.
This is a radically different book from the original trilogy. It's intended, I think, for those of us who read it as children, and have since grown up. It's about hope in the face of unexpected outcomes, and love found not quite too late. There are few other writers living or dead who could weave a convincing story that includes both a middle-aged widow's search for her place in the world, and dragons that talk. While my childhood affection for the original three novels remains unabated, Tehanu is thus far my favorite visit to the Archipelago.
Rating:  -
Hmmm. Where to begin.
First, a confession: despite my high marks for this and other installments of the "Earthsea" series, I never really warmed up to le Guin's masterworks. It's like appreciating a painting by Picasso: I know that it's a magnificent piece of art, but that doesn't mean I'd want it hanging on my living room wall. Likewise, I can recognise the craftsmanship and skill that went into creating the "Earthsea" cycle; there's so much skill in the writing, in the detail, in the mythological resonances (everything from Carl Jung to Joseph Campbell). Le Guin also had a masterful grip on the nuances of her story, as in the subtle affinity Tenar shares with thistles. But something kept bothering me, and it wasn't until this forth novel "Tenahu" that I realised what it was.
Set in the days just before Ged and Arren complete their mission as told in "The Farthest Shore", a widow named Goha receives a summons to the wizard Ogion: he is dying, and he requests her presence. Along with her adopted child Therru, who was brutally beaten, raped and burnt by her family when very young, Goha makes the journey across the island of Gont. The woman is of course Tenar, now twenty-five years older than when we last saw her in "The Tombs of Atuan", and she arrives in time to hear Ogion's last words: to teach the child, and to wait.
What she is waiting for is soon made apparent: Ged's journey to the farthest shore is completed, and he is delivered in the talons of a dragon to his home-isle, a wasted and magic-less shell of the man he once was. Despairing and empty, Ged seeks a level of healing and solace that he doesn't believe can ever be found. But the question of Therru remains a mystery; avoided by most of the island's inhabitants, Therru is a quiet and elusive child that even Tenar cannot fully understand. Between Ged's misery and the reappearance of Therru's family, Tenar struggles to balance out her life and keep those she loves safe from threats that are mundane in comparison to former enemies, but just as life-destroying as dragons, shadows and evil wizards.
Some credit must be given to the originality of the book; here is a fantasy story that has very little to do with the typical fantasy elements one would find in other books of the genre. With the exception of the imaginary setting and a few brief appearances from a dragon, "Tenahu" is a story that could be told in any context. Change around a few periphery details and Tenar and Therru's story could take place in any setting or time period, even a contemporary one. Because it is primarily concerned with issues such as gender issues, cruelty toward children, misogyny and other social illnesses, there is not as much scope for imagination this time around. There is certainly no quest narrative: Ged attempts to find inner peace, whilst Tenar escapes the men that have utmost power over her adopted daughter.
Here is when I figured out what bothered me about this book (and to a lesser degree, the previous three in the series). Le Guin speaks a lot about the balance, or the equilibrium of the world: life and death, man and woman, order and chaos, and so on. Unfortunatly, le Guin tends to concentrate more on the darker side of life, human nature and the world, with very little uplifting, cheerful or even tranquil moments to balance out the pain and horror that she fills this particular story with. Although Ged's misery is eventually relieved through his late-blossoming relationship with Tenar, it is precious little light in a very dark novel.
Far more eloquent reviewers have already highlighted the mishandling of le Guin's feminist argument, whilst the majority of reviewers reveal the disappointment many felt in the lack of magical elements in what has been toted as a fantasy series from the very beginning. For what it's worth "Tenahu" is a remarkably original and painstakingly plotted novel - but the final chapters are filled with such sickening misogyny and sadism that it left a sour taste in my mouth. I have no desire to ever read this book again, and that's something I hoped I'd never say about a le Guin novel.
Rating:  -
I think that the reviewers to this book need to be more fair minded. This is one of the most literate fantasy novel series ever written, this one is no exception. What this novel is, that some might object to who are more action oriented, is purposeful.
LeGuin is able to do what few are: inbed life lessons about growing older, going through trauma and abuse, seeing the place you live become more dangerous, without ever falling into cliche. That is the mark of a true master. The symbolism is deeply entrenched, you feel it on every page. This book is rich like the richest of desserts. It must be eaten in small doses for full appreciation.
I recommend the reviewers who didn't like it to take a second look at it. The entire point of the book revolves around that which we know we must accomplish without knowing how. That we are surrounded in the world with dangers and that we can only do our best to avoid getting hurt, but that there is a lot of power in our hearts and words, to heal ourselves and others. If all you want to read is a bunch of warriors killing each other with swords, then yes, this book will go far over your head. This is something different from typical fanstasy. It is better and far more rewarding. There is something to be said for what LeGuin is trying to impart. That there is both the merciful and the strange out there, and that if we are very lucky, we get to see the two entwined.
Lack of wonder? However could you not find wonder in a book like this. Dragons are creatures of pure magic and no one realizes this more than LeGuin.
Rating:  -
Written some twenty years after the original Earthsea trilogy, TEHANU picks up the story of Tenar's and Ged's self-imposed exile on Gont.
LeGuin's writing has matured far beyond the original three volumes. Stylistically, TEHANU is a much richer, complex, and substantive tale about abuse, men and women in age and youth, female empowerment, male disempowerment, and life's priorities. Where the earlier Earthsea novels always presented themselves on a grand and dramatic planetary scale with many pyrotechnics, TEHANU's action is limited to the island of Gont, just a few characters, and almost none of the showy magic that has always imbued Earthsea's adventures.
Unfortunately, by toning down her magical world, LeGuin also tones down the story. Hardly an Earthsea tale, TEHANU's only real connection with the Cycle is in its use of the same (far more developed) characters (although Tenar and Ged are so different that only their names remain unchanged). Very little really happens in TEHANU, and the story tends toward the lugubrious and the troubling. A heavy tale, far more interested in its own polemics than in providing entertainment, TEHANU is a book of high quality but low interest, essentially, and in its concern with denoument and death, an emotional dragline.
Rating: -
I never thought that Tehanu would be the book leading me to write my first Amazon review, yet here I am. In terms of fantasy writing, I didn't find Tehanu to be outstanding. Yet, on the same token, it was by no means bad, or even average. Taken in the context of the Earthsea world, it was good. And then I read some of the reviews posted here...
Tehanu is being described as what effectively amounts to "the worst piece of fiction ever written in all of time". On top of this, people are throwing around the phrase "women's libber". Suffice to say, I think the people who write comments like this are close-minded and sadly unable to grasp the notion of fiction that is written to do more than tell a tale.
There are three reasons why I can see people making comments like those just mentioned. First, people are angry at Le Guin for turning Ged into (what appears to be) a minor character. Second, some feel cheated out of a grand, magical adventure (like those provided in the previous three Earthsea books). And third, the main characters are (gasp) women.
Okay. Fine. Wonderful, even! So Le Guin changed the formula a bit. Get over it. Ged is changed, yes, but by doing so Le Guin offers insight into what it is to suffer loss and gain happiness through that loss. The grand adventure is missing, but Le Guin shows us an Earthsea and its people as we have never seen it before this. The main characters are women, but through their suffrage Le Guin gives us an often overlooked reflection of our own society.
Can you accept these changes? If you think you can, I believe that you'll find Tehanu a very beautiful, moving book. It carries the Earthsea story far and allows for new and interesting plot elements to be introduced. By all means read this book and judge for yourself. Recommended.
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