For me this is the most interesting of the Earthsea books so far. There’s a deep exploration of the roles of both women and men; it’s sometimes frustrating to read, and maybe if it were written today some things would be expressed differently, but I think it’s pretty much perfect as it is. I very much enjoyed it; it felt like a reward for patiently reading the earlier books with more traditional gender roles.

Le Guin writes beautiful descriptive prose, of both people and places. The oft-quoted speeches (e.g. from Moss) in this book were not so memorable in isolation for me as for some other readers; rather, it is the totality of the book that I loved.