Review: The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle Book 6 of 6ish)

The Other Wind - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Other Wind is the sixth and final book in the Earthsea series.  I really enjoyed the series, although I thought this last book was the weakest.  The story started off very strong, and I especially enjoyed the first 25% or so.  After that, while there were still good parts and I was still interested in the premise, I thought the story itself became kind of slow and repetitive. 

 

One thing I enjoyed was that we had the chance to revisit a lot of favorite characters from past books in addition to meeting some new ones.  A lot of plot threads from the various books were brought up and woven into a bigger picture.  The problem is that I thought that bigger picture was blurry.  We learn a lot about what happened in the distant past that made the world the way it is now, and what the price was, but I felt like it was all too light on logical reasoning and rational explanations, even for a fantasy world. 

 

This book has a lot of scenes with people gathering together, in small or large groups, catching each other up on recent events, or sharing what they know about things that happened in ancient history from stories they've heard.  The reader had to sit through some of those stories being told multiple times, if slightly differently and with different levels of detail each time, and it started to feel repetitive.

 

I really wanted to give this book four stars on the strength of the rest of the series, and I'm rounding up to 4 on Goodreads, but this was really a 3.5 star book for me at best.  There are a few short stories set in Earthsea that I haven’t read yet, hence the "ish" in my post title, but I think I’m ready to move on now.