Lucas Blogs About Tehanu

So, what's this book's deal?

This is the fourth book in what had previously been believed to be the Earthsea trilogy.

So then Ursula K. Le Guin decided to make it into a tetralogy?

Hmm, let's talk about that in a future Lucas Blogs About X.

Agreed, so does this book pick up where it's predecessor left off?

It comes closer than any of the other Earthsea books. It begins just a little bit before the end of The Farthest Shore. But on the other side of the Archipelago, back on Gont.

Is it about Tenar?

No points for guessing. She actually goes by Goha now. You see, it's been twenty-five years since she left Atuan with Ged. In that time she's come to Gont, spent some time living with Ged's old master, Ogion, before marrying a farmer and settling down near Gont Port.

Are things going well with her husband?

Oh, he's dead.

So she's a widow at . . . what? Forty?

About. Also her two grown children have moved off the farm. Apple lives with her husband in the city, and Spark is off at sea. He's probably a pirate.

Wait, her kids are named Apple and Spark?

Yeah, but those are only their use names. Spark is actually pretty clever because his father's name was Flint.

I see what they did there.

In any case, the action really kicks off when Goha's neighbor tells her th—

Wait minute, are you doing to do that thing you did in the Tombs of Atuan review where you refer to Tenar by the name that everyone calls her instead of just calling her Tenar?

Fine. Things kick off when Tenar's neighbor tells her that the little girl living with a family of vagrants at the edge of town has been found burned in an abandoned campfire.

WHOA! What kind of kid's book begins with a horrific act of child abuse?

Oh, this book is where the series segues out of the Young Adult demographic. That said . . . Harry Potter?

Fair enough.

Anyway, Tenar adopts the child and names her Therru, which is Kargish for "burning," and as the child slowly heals, a messenger comes to tell Tenar that Ogion is dying. So, with a child who can barely walk and breath in tow, Tenar sets out on the road to Re Albi to the hut where Ogion first taught Ged the art magic.  Tenar tends to the old wizard, leading him to the spot where he has chosen to die, and learning his true name, Aihal, so that he can be properly remembered. Then the wizard of Gont Port and the new wizard of Re Albi show up to disregard everything she has to say about Aihal and generally condescend to her. But she keeps on living in Ogion's hut with Therru, who is enamored of the old wizard's goats.

So, the series has become a sort of "Little House outside Re Albi?"

Hmm, well, let's talk The Farthest Shore SPOILERS, shall we?  So at the end of the last book, Ged and Arren have defeated the wizard Cob, sealed off the doorway between life and death, and dragged themselves out of the Dry Lands over the Mountains of Pain. Upon arriving back on Selidor (the westernmost island of Earthsea), they're greeted by the dragon Kalessin, who flies them back to Roke, where Arren is proclaimed King Lebannen (that's his true name), and Ged says he's no longer a mage and flies off with Kalessin to who knows where.

Is it to Gont?

Once again, no points for guessing. But yes, it's to Gont, Kalessin deposits him on a cliff near Ogion's hut leaving Tenar to figure out away to get him back to the hut. She gets help from Heather, the half-wit girl who helps watch the goats and Aunty Moss, the village witch. And without getting too much more into the plot, it's largely concerned with Ged struggling to figure out who he is if he can't do magic, Tenar trying to protect Therru from her vagrant family who are trying to take her back, and the new wizard of Re Albi's campaign of terror against them. Oh, and Ged and Tenar awkwardly tiptoeing around what their relationship is now that they're both grown-ups.

Huh, I'd say that sounds pretty dark, but I guess darkness has always been something the series is unafraid to confront.

That's true. I'd say that this entry is somewhat more mediative than its predecessors. The action only appears fitfully and the story is more concerned with the characters' day to day lives: Tenar keeping up Ogion's hut, Therru playing with her little wooden figures, Ged returning to his childhood occupation of goatherding.

I gotta say, you're not making this sound very exciting.

It's not a particularly exciting book, no. But it is a pleasure to read (yes even with all the dark stuff). It's like checking in with old friends and seeing how they've changed (even though I didn't wait eighteen years like people who read the books as they came out did). Le Guin uses the deliberate pacing to give the story room to breath and give the characters time to reveal themselves. She also takes this opportunity to interrogate some of the base assumptions of her imagined world, like women's place in Gontish society, the celibacy of wizards, and the exclusion of women from academic wizardry. So, you know, it's nice to see a fantasy series that doesn't just obliquely comment on real world issues, but examines the biases of it's own fictional society. Oh, and there's some stuff about dragons that's gonna be super-important in future volumes, and it involves Therru, but I don't want get super into it here 'cause SPOILERS but let's just say that before he dies Ogion tells a story about the folk belief that humans and dragons actually started out as the same species and could take either form.

Maybe you're venturing too far into SPOILER territory to say that much.

Well, it was published nearly thirty years ago.

Anything else you want SPOIL while you're at it?

Nah, I mean, there's more stuff that happens, but I think our non-hypothetical readers will get the gist of it.

So, why's it called Tehanu?

You'll have to read it to fi—

You're the worst, Lucas.

Are we still trotting out that bit?

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin, illustrated by Charles Vess, from The Books of Earthsea, The Complete Illustrated Edition, Saga Books hardcover edition, October 2018, originally published 1990, 152 pages, pairs well with goat's milk and that red dress your mother made for you when you were a girl

Links:

Once again, I'm trotting out the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.

The ilustrator's website, too.

And here's a link to some fanart of the major characters from the novel, from top to bottom: Aunty Moss, Heather, Ged, Tenar, and Therru. (though the artist goofed and put all of Therru's burn scars on the wrong side).