I never would have written this book without the second #Earthsea trilogy. It is far less successful than the first—whether you measure success by sales, by critical reputation, or by impact on later fantasy writers, who voraciously pillaged the first trilogy for concepts like magical true names, morally ambiguous dragons, and schools for wizards (yes, that idea too is original to Le Guin). But now I see that return to Earthsea over the subsequent decades as an act of great bravery, from a writer who never gave up exploring what it means to take action in the world, then return to that action and reconsider.

— Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea by John Plotz (My Reading) (Page 15)