Books
- Anvilicious:
- The feminist themes in Tehanu are the complete opposite of subtle. Thankfully toned down much more in The Other Wind.
- Before that, The Tombs of Atuan took a hard line in warning about the dangers of having blind faith in religious and political institutions.
- Fandom Rivalry: A little with Harry Potter; inevitable given the two series' similar premises and that popular things will always be compared to everything. Earthsea fans feel that it was popularity-snubbed in favor of the (to them) more poorly-written/unliterary Potter. It doesn't help that Le Guin herself has criticized the series. Most of her venom seems reserved for clueless reporters who don't realize how much Rowling adapted/borrowed from old fantasies (including this one)...Le Guin: I read a review that called the Harry Potter books a great, original work. I agree with the first part.
- From the other direction, some Harry Potter fans are of the opinion that where Rowling's books improved over time, Le Guin's suffer Seasonal Rot.
- Fanon Discontinuity: Some would rather she'd stopped after the first three.
- Ho Yay: Arren's introduction to Ged in The Farthest Shore. Look inside the text, you know it to be true. There's also a little bit between Ged and Vetch in A Wizard of Earthsea.
- Jerkass Woobie: Spark, in Tehanu. He returns from sea and presumptuously reclaims the farm from his mother, though that is his right, and snubs both Tehanu and Ged. He quickly assumes the place of master of the farm and begins treating his mother with the sort of misogynistic condescension common in their culture as well. However, when she announces their departure, he quickly loses his guff, seeming almost lost without his mother already; a picture starts of someone who's lost the one thing he felt drawn to in sailing, falling back on his surviving family the only way he was raised to, and finding even that's changed and different. He does somewhat change his tone from then until his departure, offering all the family's savings to Tenar for their travels, agreeing to carry a message to his sister, and offering an olive branch to Ged in showing him some sailor's knots for his pack.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Ged's Shadow and the way it stalks him for most of A Wizard of Earthsea. One of the most chilling moment is when it possesses Skiorh and it turns to Ged revealing that there is no face under Skiorh's hood.
- Tenar/Arha, a fifteen-year-old girl, sentencing three men to death by starvation and having nightmares about their agony at the beginning of The Tombs of Atuan.
- The Tombs of Atuan themselves, a dark, oppressive place underground inhabited by forces of pure malice, which people worship, engaging in Human Sacrifice in their name and building a fanatic religious system (partially) around them.
- The entire concept of The Farthest Shore. Magic is fading all of the world, people are obsessed with their mortality and going insane (especially wizards), and there is someone behind what's happening, someone powerful enough to be able to defeat the dragons and have control on the dead. Most people seem to be on the verge on a Despair Event Horizon for almost the whole book.
- Gelluk in Tales from Earthsea. He is unhinged enough to make all the other villains in the series pale in comparison.
- Seasonal Rot: A common fan response to Tehanu and subsequent books. The Other Wind probably attracts the most criticism for the revelation that the afterlife featured in the original trilogy was actually created by the wizards and blocks human souls from a blissful reincarnation. People who admired the bleak and austere character of the "Dry Land"
tended to feel that this robbed the world of Earthsea of its poignancy. - They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some think it would have been better for Ged to have remained a more active force after the initial trilogy as opposed to much of the spotlight going to Tenar, Tehanu, and Lebannen.
- Tear Jerker:
- "Firelight", as it's about Ged's last days, looking back at his adventures and noting how everything came full circle in the end before sailing off to the afterlife in the Lookfar. The Reality Subtext of this being the last Earthsea story and published posthumously just makes it hit all the harder.
- In Wizard, the marooned brother and sister that Ged meets on a mile-long sandbar. They've lived out their entire lives in miserable isolation through no fault of their own. Ged can't even communicate with them, yet they unwittingly set the events of Tombs and Shore into motion.
