Rating: 
Summary: Ties up all the loose ends
Review: If you've read all the previous Earthsea books, this one is worth getting just to see all the loose ends of the series neatly tied up. We finally straighten out the historical relationships between the Kargs, the dragons, and the people of the Archipelago. I liked knowing what happens to all my favorite characters- like getting postcards from old friends.I wish I could give the book full marks, but there were a couple of big problems I had with it. The first half was good, but after that everything that happened was completely inevitable. Predictable. Second, after maintaining a pretty consistent view of the afterlife (in the Archipelago, anyway) in the first several books, LeGuin's turnaround in this book felt like she'd regretted the rather grim afterlife portrayed in the first several books and was trying to *fix* things. It didn't ring true. So it's not her best work, but it's still a good read and if you like the Earthsea books you'll want to read this one too.
Rating: 
Summary: like comming back home after a long abstence
Review: i've read the first books of the earthsea cicle when i was in my early teens and reading "the other wind" it feels as if la guin has grown up with me, meeting all her old and much beloved charecters, now all grownup and comming to turms with themself and their place in the larger scame of things, pluse a few new and as interesting charecter that just fit right in. this is a story about a young not to seccessful wisard who somhow manage to reach the land of the dead answering a call of his passed away wife. it's the beautiful and complex love story between tenar and ged, now, her whole life past them and have barely nothing in the world beside themself and the strange burn child tenar. it's the story of labnen, a young king now, trying to get around an arrage marrige while trying to put his new vast kingdom in order. it's a story of dragons and people and freedom that allcomes together in a fasinating way.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the wait...
Review: 'The Other Wind' brings together old characters, new faces, and the people (and dragons) found in passing in Le Guin's short pieces. It answers the questions that were raised in 'Tehanu' while quietly investigating other matters- taking the reader beyond what is assumed to be true of the world. While Ged is not the main focus of this novel, his presence is felt through the other characters, in the many lives that are tied to his.
This book is one of the few I've read in the past ten years or so that I've closed with a silent, strong, "Thank you" to the author. The people of Earthsea that I've grown up with, that Le Guin has grown with, are nearing the end of their story. This is not a tacked-on ending. This a tale told with the primal truth of a master storyteller; a story that reflects, rather than regrets, the many years between the first and last. My advice to anyone new to the series is to read the first three books, and then wait. Give yourself some time to grow, to change, to come back to this world that you thought you knew, to find it changed with you, and to be thankful for it.
Rating:
Summary: A magnificent, meaningful book
Review: The Other Wind is the winner of the 2002 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and for a reason. The book is beautifully written and meticulously crafted; It's a concise book in which every word counts and has a reason for being there. It deals in a more mature way with themes that appeared in the previous four Earthsea novels: death, loss, greed, intelligence (represented by the wizards) vs. wisdom (represented by the witches, sorcerers and common folk), middle age and earthly (e.g. watering the cabbages) vs. epic (e.g. healing the world) concerns, the difference between men and women and how opposite things actually complement each other (light/darkness, silence/sound and, new in this book, destruction/healing); to name a few. I can understand why some people were disappointed with Tehanu, the previous novel in the series (although personally I liked it): it dealt almost exclusively with mundane life and its problems; the fantasy element was almost non-existent. The Other Wind, while still dealing with some of these issues, is a much more epic story. And since, as I mentioned above, it magnificently blends elements from all the previous novels, it should appeal to anybody who has read an Earthsea book in the past and liked it. The book also ties up neatly most of the threads from the previous books and answers most questions that were previously left unanswered. Unlike what many popular authors do these days, this book wasn't written by Le Guin to make quick money on a classic series. On the contrary: This is a book that demanded to be written. As any good book, it can be read on different levels and enjoyed by people of different ages and genders. The Other Wind is a book that deals maturely and, despite being concise,thoroughly with many themes and is the culmination of
decades of constant work and refinement by Ursula Le Guin. Oren Douek
Rating: 
Summary: Preachy
Review: I am a large fan of the other books in this series, even the collection of short stories, but I did not really enjoy this book. Le Guin fell into the trap that so many fantasy authors do at the end of a series, they use the last book to preach about their views on life and death, the afterlife and the meaning of it all. All of that may be well and good, indeed you may be interested in Le Guin's specific insights into the topic, but it fails to do justice as a novel in the series. Many of the things I enjoyed most about the other volumes in this series are lacking in this one; the poignent and economical writing melts into grandious theory and fantastical activites, which do far more to dehumanize the characters and their conflicts than anything else. Additionally, the hand of fate is far to clear in a least a few of the plots, like the king's marriage. It is as if Le Guin simply got tired of dealing with the human characters in her world, like the joiner protagonist, and simply wants to wrap up the dynastic thread of the world in a tight little package of marriage. Above all I guess my main problem with the book is the implausability of the plot. We are supposed to believe that for thousands of years no one talked to the forigners or the dragons to find out about the other wind? Or that the dragons did nothing to fight the encroachment? Or that somehow the resolution of the confilct somehow means that all dragons will leave the world and wrap up all the lose ends in the world?
Rating:
Summary: The Last Earthsea book?
Review: This seems to be the last Eartsea novel, though I hope it isn't so. This book is more complicated than any other book in the cycle and contains more depth. Their used to be a fine line (or a wall, at least) between the living and the dead. But now that line is being blurred. A young mender has been touched across the wall by his deceased wife. Tenar takes him in, and they journey to Roke with Ged, the Archmage. This company is joined by others who will try to make the line whole again or utterly destroy it. Accompanying them is a Kargad princess, the High King of Havnor, and fate. They go to the far west, farther than in the Farthest Shore, to the extreme edges of the Earth, where an ultimate truth can be broken. This, in my opinion, is the best book in the cycle. It is also the longest, and the one with the most morale. It also has an outstanding ending and a superb plot. This is a great book for any Earthsea Cycle fan.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the wait!
Review: The Other Wind is a thoroughly satifying end to what may very well be the best fantasy saga ever conceived. As a child I read the trilogy; as an adult now I complete the tale and understand more than I ever could have then. LeGuin is a true artist and visionary. Her work is a treasure.
Rating:
Summary: The Harrowing of Hades
Review: Until I read Ursula K. Le Guin's new novel, "The Other Wind," it hadn't occurred to me that previous volumes left unresolved the fate of the souls in Earthsea's equivalent of Hades, i.e. the Dry Land. These mournful undead played a prominent role in "The Farthest Shore," where the Archmage Ged and his companion, Arren descended into the underworld to battle an evil mage. Ged and Arren returned out of the Dry Land, but left behind those who were neither alive nor truly dead. Who were those shadows of the living? Why were they condemned to lead such miserable half-lives, in which Arren "saw the mother and child who had died together, and they were in the dark land together; but the child did not run, nor did it cry, and the mother did not hold it or ever look at it. And those who had died for love passed each other in the streets." "The Other Wind" debates the riddle of a 'true' death, and reveals how the very existence of the Dry Land threatens the people of Earthsea. Actually there is more debate than action in this latest Le Guin fantasy, but as always she delivers her message through her complex and likeable characters. There lives the true magic in this series. The reader is first introduced to the plight of the undead through Alder, a recent widower who can magically mend crockery and other mundane items. In a dream, his deceased wife kisses him over the low stone wall that separates the living world from the Dry Land. Subsequent dreams reveal other undead, who beg him to release them from the dark and return them to the land of the living. Alder flees to the Island of Gont, to seek help from the former Archmage. But old Ged used up all of his magic while defeating the Dry Land mage (in "The Farthest Shore") and he counsels Alder to ask for assistance from the new King. At the royal residence on Havnor, Alder meets many characters from previous Earthsea stories: Ged's wife, Tenar who was formerly priestess of the Tombs of Atuan; the burned child, Tehanu who can summon dragons; the dragon, Irien who assumes the shape of a woman; and Arren, the young King himself, companion to Ged on his fateful journey to the Dry Land. King Arren (who now uses his true name, Lebannen) has problems of his own, including rampaging dragons and a heavily veiled princess, foisted off on him by a former enemy who orders the King to marry her. Nevertheless he agrees to help Arren, the sorcerous pot-mender who seems to have acquired the power to destroy the balance between Earthsea's underworld and its realm of the living. The climax to "The Other Wind" takes place on Roke, the island of Mages, where the author ties all of her loose plot devices together--EXCEPT for the prophecy regarding 'The Woman of Gont.' Admittedly the former archmage, Ged offered Alder 'a' solution to the prophecy before the sorcerer left Gont, but it wasn't very satisfying. My hope is that there is time for at least one more Earthsea fantasy --one where the prophecy first revealed in "Tehanu (volume three)" is fully explained.
Rating:
Summary: Being, not Doing
Review: The Other Wind takes place about 15 years after the end of Tehanu, and it's all about dragons, and life, and love, and power, and death, and the choices people make (there's a lovely line about Ged preparing all his life to do, finally, what he had no other choice but to do). This story resonates with me. It doesn't have the high wizardly (i.e. male) adventure feel of the first three books, but is rather more like the viewpoint of Tehanu, concerned with being, not doing. I'd been hoping for a bit more about one of the themes of last spring's Tales from Earthsea: art-wizardry practiced by men at the expense of something lost/stolen/denied to women of power. That theme is here, but never stated overtly. But four of the main characters are women of great power, whether political, wizardly or dragonesque, and the men defer to them.... The writing is beautiful. The philosophy is admirable. This is one I'll re-read gladly and save forever...
Rating: 
Summary: about time!
Review: Thank god - le Guin has rescued Earthsea from what was once described as the most depressing afterlife in fantasy literature! Probably not the best in the series, but wonderful none the less.
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