Book Review: Tales from Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tales of Earthsea is a collection of novellas and short stories that form a bridge between Tehanu and The Other Wind. It is also, like Tehanu, is an argument with the refrain repeated in A Wizard of Earthsea: “Weak as women’s magic, wicked as women’s magic.”

Now this refrain is well worth arguing with: it was one of the reasons I quit Earthsea and indeed all of Le Guin in a huff when I was about eleven. But I felt that Tales of Earthsea retconned the established Earthsea worldbuilding just a bit too hard to feel real, while also doubling down on my least favorite element in Tehanu, which on the whole I thought grappled with the inequality baked into the Earthsea premise far more successfully.

( Spoilers )