The Farthest Shore

The Farthest Shore is the third book in Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea cycle. It's also probably the weakest, which is sad. In reading this series and talking to other people, I'm discovering that LeGuin can be a bit hit or miss. She has some great books mixed in with some not-so-great books.

This book really suffered from uneven pacing. Like the first book in the series, there were entire chapters devoted to sailing between islands. Action scenes seemed to come out of nowhere. At one point I had to re-read a page three times before I was satisfied that I hadn't missed anything; an chase had just started without warning.

I also had a hard time accepting the philosophy of this book. Ged, the old, wise wizard, spends a lot of time trying to teach his young charge, Arren, that action is bad because it tends to upset the balance. Ged is a very passive character who mostly strives to be rather than to do. This is entirely at odds with the saving the world plot of the book. I kept waiting for the story to prove Ged wrong, but his philosophy is ultimately validated. The bad guy repents with very little action on Ged or Arren's part.

It's a little strange to me that I could like The Tombs of Atuan so much and be disappointed with the other two books. I'm not used to series being quite this uneven. I may like some books better than others, but the quality of any given series is usually fairly consistent.

I have bought the next three books because I'm curious about what happens and, perhaps stupidly, hopeful that the series will improve. LeGuin wrote the final three books 30 years after the first three, so I'm hoping for a marked improvement. Beyond that, the next book shifts focus back to the main character of The Tombs of Atuan, who I liked a lot. And one of the books is a collection of short stories, which should solve a lot of my problems with the pacing of the stories.