Rating: 
Summary: other side of a circle
Review: It is interesting to see many negative reviews of this book, I loved the other perspective of it and how it deals with the great forgotten of history, the mundane, ordinary and routine (ie a lot of relationships!). Fantasy (if a genre lable can be given to this book) like most other types of history is too often dominated by war as the defining moment, Earthsea and Tehanu in particular show that it need not be so. To me the story was gripping, touching and facinating. I enjoyed seeing how the heroine lived day to day, and the influence of the magical world on her life. It's a shame that many won't enjoy this story, but great stories are not only found in tumultous conflict. Cant wait to read the shortstories and the other wind.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely dissapointing....
Review: This is not typical LeGuin, and it is barely Earthsea. If you enjoyed the mystery, the deep magic, and rich atmosphere of Earthsea, then avoid this. This story follows the extremely boring, unmagical life that Goha lives. Throw in a burned, raped little girl, and Ged without any magical powers (or much else to offer) and you have 288 pages of pure boredom. You get to follow Goha as she mends clothing, cares for goats and chickens, cleans, and ponders a woman's role in a male dominated world. There are exciting adventures and mysteries going on all around Goha and Earthsea, yet frustratingly LeGuin chooses not to follow any of these. The finale adds to the insult as LeGuin wraps up this directionless story within the last two pages. It will leave you wondering what the heck you just read, and why in the world LeGuin chose to explore this mundane magicless tale in Earthsea. Boring, boring, boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Different from other Earthsea books, but Great!
Review: Tehanu was different from all the other Earthsea books, but that doesn't necessarily mean I liked it any less. It seemed so real - I could almost see the dragon Kalessin. It was very odd to see Ged portrayed as a simple man when the previous books make him seem so much more powerful. Tehanu made Ged seem much more realistic to me.
Another issue brought up in Tehanu is the woman's role in Earthsea. Both Tenar and Therru are strong characters. I loved to see women making changes in the society of Earthsea, which before Tehanu put men first and foremost in everything. I can see how people with narrower views didn't like this, though.
If you're looking for a book exactly like the other Earthsea novels, brace yourself; Tehanu is very different. If you don't mind the difference, you'll love Tehanu. It's an exciting and refreshing read.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful change
Review: Far from being a feminist polemic,this book is simply a great tale told from a woman's perspective. Her reflections about the roles of men and women in Earthsea are very similar to what many women think about on a daily basis. I therefore found the book very affirming of my experience and I enjoyed the way it celebrated the daily and seasonal tasks that have so often fallen to women. I loved the first three books as well but knew something was missing for me. It was a relief to find in this book that women also have a valuable place in LeGuin's concept of Earthsea. Although Tehanu is not packed with the kind of dramatic action that marked the first three books in the series, the writing remains beautiful and I found the story very engaging.
Rating: 
Summary: Story takes backseat to message
Review: I might have liked this book when I was in college, and I may like when I'm fifty, but I can't say I liked it much at 37. The problem with the book is NOT the feminist message. I was surprised at the almost complete lack of a feminist perspective in the first three books, and was excited to see that Tenar was the protagonist of TEHANU. The problem is that Le Guin goes into a kind of Heinlein mode here, letting the Message overpwer the story. In fact, there is very little story at all. It isn't until the very last chapter that something is actually allowed to happen, but before that happens we are forced to see Tenar and Ged utterly humiliated. So do we "reject" the book, as an earlier reviewer does? Definitely not. This is still a very well-written story (if "story" is what it actually is) that adds depth to the world of Earthsea and deepens our understanding of that world and its people. Hey, it's Le Guin! It's not her best work, but it's vastly superior to the bulk of stuff published under the rubric of fantasy. Fans of Earthsea might want to think of this book as a bridge to TALES OF EARTHSEA and THE OTHER WIND, both of which are inspired and exciting. (I wish, though, that she had made TEHANU a short story and had developed the short stories "The Finder" and "Dragonfly" into full-length novels!)
Rating:
Summary: very different
Review: This book surprised me the first time I read it. It is unlike any other book in the Earthsea series. It was written to express feminism. It is not as much of a fantasy book as realistic fiction. If not for the names, and the ending, I would have thought it was just that. This book deals with the widowed Tenar, the second Earthsea book told from her point of view. She journeys to visit Ogion, Ged's teacher of wizardry. His death is met by the reappearance of Ged, the Archmage. He is not the only wizard that appears, though, and the other one is not exactly right in his head. This book is a story of the second half (or third) of the life of Tenar. It has barely any of the wizardry and amazing creatures from the first 3 books. If you want that, you will not like this book. I still liked it though, and recommend it to any Earthsea fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Using a well-beloved series for a.... soapbox?Not Satisfying
Review: LeGuin manages to destroy EarthSea as a fantasy series in this book, turning it into a social commentary about social responsibility, the dangers women face, the problems of men abusin children, etcetcetc. The writing itself is decent. Some of the insights are interesting, but most of this has been said before, about real people in the real world, and its rather distressing that LeGuin decided to use EarthSea for this purpose alone. Furthermore, the story itself is rather drab. LeGuin makes some good points through Tenar- such as the notion of female power as opposed to male power- but makes them in the most awkward manner, through pages and pages of Tenar ruminating. I was also greatly annoyed by the way LeGuin stripped EarthSea of its haunting, fleeting quality that gripped the reader. A fantasy, not being about real people, has its greatest strength in its setting AND characters as opposed to its characters only. here you have a fantasy devoid of setting and full of character; what you end up with is unsatisfying. Add to that the flashbang, tacked on and quite tacky ending (in what is basically a description of rape of a woman because she dares be equal) involving an evil mysogenist with cliched characteristics, and you have a book that fails to engage the reader.
Rating:
Summary: A foggy gem
Review: This book is a foggy gem. When you first look at it, it's nothing terribly glamorous, nothing all that thrilling, but gazing deep into it, it begins to make you wonder. And the more you stare into the gem, the more you realize its hidden beauty, its poignant depths.
Enough with the metaphors though. I did like this novel, but in a reserved and thoughtful way. It is extremely different from the trilogy, almost in the way a good epilogue is, when all the ends are being tied, and the characters you've come to love are dissapearing with the words on the page. So if you only like exciting, quick-paced adventure, you shouldn't touch Tehanu with a ten-foot pole, but if you like passionate writing about the ordeals of finding yourself, finding your own beauty, then you should love this book.
Rating:
Summary: all is here
Review: yes, it is a women book - but a women book for men to read.
Rating:
Summary: Ladies to the Forefront
Review: 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.
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