The Farthest Shore (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 3)

No cover — Ursula K. Le Guin: The Farthest Shore (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 3) (Paperback, Bantam Doubleday Dell)

Paperback

Published by Bantam Doubleday Dell.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-10131-7

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(2 reviews)

13 editions

Luka /bookwyrm/ reviewed The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Earthsea Cycle, #3)

about death

5 stars

This book has a strong message about the necessity of death, imagining what happens when immortality is possible.

el dang reviewed The Farthest Shore (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 3) by Ursula K. Le Guin

When one door is closed many more are open

4 stars

Content warning mild spoilers inside

A lovely third instalment of the Earthsea series, and a good handoff from it being all Ged's story to broadening out. A few off notes though:

I found the emphasis on restoring the King to bring back order off-putting and at odds with the gentle daoism infusing everything else about these books.
Arren seems to go awfully quickly from doubting naif to ready to be crowned. I liked how much Ged's ascendancy was about time, effort and learning from his own mistakes, and Arren's feels rushed by comparison.
This may be the most extreme of the Earthsea books so far for just lacking female characters.

I gather that the later books were in part a deliberate effort by an older Le Guin to fix some of the deficiencies of the first 3, especially around gender (even in Tombs of Atuan, I found Tenar more a captive who has things happen to her than a full actor). As much as I did enjoy this one, it's made me look forward to those even more.