I would have loved to read Ged as female, or at least gender-neutral. But she goes to such lengths to insist that no women are ever wizards and witches are basically frauds that I can't quite imagine how this is going to play out in the later books. If I thought she were doing it as social commentary, I'd feel a lot better. But I don't think that's it at all.

We're completists, so we're going the whole way, regardless; we read all the Dark Is Rising books, even though neither of us was particularly enthused, for some of the same reasons. If Harry Potter has nothing else going for it, at least it has this: there are women, smart women, powerful women, women who could be heroes. And more than one, even! I got a book of short stories, too, which evidently has a few Earthsea stories, so we'll see how those go, too.