I got the feeling he wasn't black so much as very dark -- dark south indian, maybe -- because there are people who are described as darker and people who are lighter in the first book (as I recall). So yeah, I noticed, but I don't know if that's because I actually noticed, or because I remember the huge wank when SciFi did that miniseries a few years ago and had an all-white cast because no one had ever read the books, I guess.

And I checked wikipedia, and the fourth book is evidently about the stuff I'm interested in, so we'll see. So far, The Tombs of Atuan is at least acknowledging that gender and gendered power relations exist, which makes a nice change.