Tehanu (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 4) Mass Market Paperback – September 1, 2001

It took me over twenty years since first reading this book to appreciate its fiercely positive affirmation of the extraordinary in the ordinary. Those looking for another epic saga, a sword and sorcery hero’s journey, may at first overlook the quiet strength of the survivor, the protector, the wounded veteran. Those who have never been shut out may not fully comprehend the rage of a character outside looking in. After forty+ years of living, Tenar’s truth and anger and parental love resonate. The first two books were grand adventures. I noticed the themes of loneliness and family, callousness and maturing, trauma and healing, but it was the adventure I loved most as a youth. As an older woman, I now thrill to Tenar’s words in the book I did not appreciate in youth. I can mourn Ged’s loss while also finally seeing he gained wholeness. I recognize the wise and kindly master of Roke who can’t even conceive of ever taking me on as a student. This is a very different story from the first three. I’m just now ready to say why shouldn’t it be?

I read the Earthsea trilogy when I was a teen in the 90's. I heard rumors then of a 4th book, Tehanu, and wanted badly to read it, but never saw it in stores. The internet didn't exist yet, so I did not pursue it further, believing I would read it someday. I finished reading it today, as a woman in my mid-30's. It's a book I am glad I didn't try to grasp when I was younger. Like Le Guin mentions in the afterword, she said she needed nearly 18 years to gain the experience to write the book, and I think I needed my 20 years to read it and be ready to hear what it had to say. I understand the book has been criticized by some for being overly 'feminist', and she addressed that in the afterword deftly, and without shrinking or apologizing for what she wrote, and I love her all the more for it.I don't want to spoil anything, but I feel the heart of this book is in Tenar's character development through maiden and then mother, and her relationship to crones as she looks forward to the next stage of her life. Her relationships to power are explored--both the power she possesses innately, and the powers that have influenced her externally. She cares for a girl who has been disfigured and disused beyond the point of healing, such that only a transformation would allow her to thrive. Ged spent the last of his power at the end of 'The Farthest Shore', and must find a renewed purpose to continue living, as his power is no longer the core of his identity, and he is no longer effectual in the ways in which he has been accustomed his whole life. This book explores further the role of death in the life cycle, and the pressures of pain and injustice that push each of these lives deep into the earth, from which they must all burst forth and transform renewed as seedlings must reach for the sunlight.Reading a high fantasy book with a woman past her flower (invisible as they often are) as the main protagonist has affected me profoundly. I wish desperately that I could still thank Ursula K. Le Guin for what her writing and vision have mean to to my life, but I am too late to catch her before her final departure. I felt as though, reading this, that in the telling she had whispered a piece of her true name in my ear, and left behind a home in Earthsea, and her books and sage insight, and the cycle continues unbroken.

As book four in the Earthsea saga, this book is a radical departure from the tone and feel of the first three. There is very little magic in this book; rather what we have is a very fine delineation of everyday living in a world where things do not always go right, where the rape, burning, and near murder of a child, while not an ordinary occurrence, is part of the way things are.Tenar, who we first met in book two, The Tombs of Atuan, is the point of view character of this book, a now middle-aged woman who has settled down to an ordinary life as a farmer’s wife, whose days have become a matter of routine, where magic, mages, and kings are merely fond memories. But her husband is now dead, she has ‘adopted’ the poor abused child Therra mentioned above, and change comes in the form of a message that Origon, Ged’s teacher and master mage of Gont island, is dying. From here we follow Tenar’s attempts to forge just what her place in life is, accompanied by a now magic-less Ged, in terms of both everyday living and the place of women within the power structure of mages and kings.There is a very definite turning in this book towards feminist themes, at times almost stridently so, in sharp contrast to the male-dominated earlier books. Tenar comes to question the right of any man to order her life, while at the same time recognizing that there is an incompleteness to her life without a complementary man to live it with. Issues of home, hearth, and children’s education (embodied by the physically and emotionally scarred Therra) are of prime importance here. All this makes for a very gritty, real-world feel to this book, certainly far away from fairy-tale land. Those who loved the earlier books may find this too much of a change, but I found that for myself, this book makes a great counter-point to those books, providing the whole with a balance that is perfectly in key with the general philosophy of Earthsea, that all things must be kept in balance. At the same time, this is not a book for younger children, as the themes and events are too dark, violent, and rife with heavy emotional freighting. Older teens can probably derive much from this book, with Tenar as a strong female role model and coping with loss and tragedy are so well presented.Le Guin’s prose style is still the simple, minimalist structure that we have grown so used to over the years, a fine vehicle for presenting difficult concepts in easily digestible thought flavors. Things are never over-described, but rather left with a certain amount of incompleteness that allows the reader to add his own mental picture.Very different from the first three books, but with its own power to capture your imagination, and with much to say about the everyday world where bad things must be met, handled, and then continue on with your life.

Ursula K. Le Guin in my opinion is one of the best authors! The ease in which her books read but yet have a complex philosophical underlining are just spectacular. Tehanu is Le Guin at her finest. The book is feminist without being feminist, its a realistic view of what its like to live. The book portrays a lot of life's sorrows and balances sorrow with joy! The main focus is on choices and who we choice to be without being confined by what we are supposed to be. We all can play different roles that will change throughout our lives. I enjoyed this book more than any of the other Earthsea's and is now one of my favorite books I've read.

Good book

I was in doubt about ordering the whole series. But the book came out to be in excellent condition and beautiful covers. Ordering whole series.

If you are like me; buying all the mass market paperbacks of this wonderful series, because you love the covers and want the books all to be in the same size: think again. The don’t come in the same size. A bit of a dissapointment

Dieses Buch erzählt die Geschichte von Ged und Tenar weiter. Ursula LeGuin hat nur wenige Bücher aus Earthsea hinterlassen, doch die sind Teil des Fantasy-Weltkulturerbes!

Um exemplo de como transformar coisas mundanas e normais em coisas extraordinárias.Como em todos os outros livros dessa série, os conflitos se resolvem quase que praticamente sem conflitos, e nesse caso não é diferente. Eu não acho difícil pessoas criticarem esse livro exatamente pelo final dele, ondem muito conflitos se resolvem de uma forma muito pé no chão e simples, porem a beleza dessa obra não esta no final e nem nos conflitos, esta nas personagens.Eu acho que se você se permitir embarcar no dia a dia desses personagens, você vai se deparar com uma historia e com personagens apaixonantes.Não espere uma historia fácil ou personagens simples, é uma historia que vai mexer com você (contando que você se permita viver a experiencia).Esse é um livro que eu recomendo sem a menor sobra de duvida.