「Ｂｅｈｅｍｏｔｈ」

Well, I'm a full two weeks behind, but I finally finished Tehanu!

Ended up liking the second half a lot more than the first. Once they were like out of the village up in the mountains and the plot really started moving, it was really good the whole way through.

It honestly felt like Le Guin working out her own feelings while she was writing the book, in many parts. Which is totally fair, I do that all the time while writing, but it's a very different feel than the previous books. There's a lot of vagueness and trying out different ideas, retconning things, etc. It's more messy, but not really in a bad way.

There's like a central tension over like... wanting to situate this story within this other story, the one about Lebannen and the search for the new archmage. I wouldn't be surprised if she initially thought that up right after The Farthest Shore, but decided not to write it. Anyway, that is clashing with the extremely grounded low-fantasy story that is actually being told, and the way those stories are like... not allowed to intersect.

All of that rumination on the nature of men and women and their relationships to power, didn't really affect the plot much in the end, actually. The high fantasy stuff is just kinda running like clockwork. That's what makes it a bit frustrating, especially in the early going, I think.

It's like Le Guin came back to this story and said "I'm going to complicate everything I wrote before, but still keep to the same plot that would happen in a generic fantasy novel".

What I really want from the next book would just be like... a continuation of this, with Therru continuing to grow up, more low-stakes business on Gont, etc. But I know it goes off and does something completely different again. Alas!