lunabee34

Huh. Well.

Because, um, well, see...

I wasn't interested, I wasn't compelled; mostly, it felt like I was reading a pastiche, and not in an interesting fanfiction-y kind of way. This series is not getting much better for me; and unlike with The Dark Is Rising series, I feel like a bad person for not liking these books. I think it's because when I was a kid I had two close friends who loved them -- and Michael and Danny never quite forgave me for not reading the books in the first place. I know I tried, several times, and I have no idea why I wasn't interested then, but I have a feeling it was either the dragons (which I'm sure they tried to use as a selling point; I've never been that interested in dragons) or it was Ged.

He's just not that interesting to me.

If the book were really about Arren, rather than being about Ged from Arren's point of view, I might have liked it better. I think Arren is a fascinating character. In fact, if Le Guin would just write a few books about Arren and Tenar, I think I'd be thrilled.

And I agree that it's nice to see Ged grow up, but, well, he seems really Mary-Sue-y to me. I mean, of course, he grew up to be Archmage, and of course he's going to solve the Mystery of the Lost Magic, and of course in the end he's going to lose his magic because he's just that cool that he can lose all his magic and still be really awesome. (I mean, there are two more books to go, right?)

As for the rest of the book, well. The Sea People were interesting. And the Great Ones.

I had a huge feeling of deja vu reading this book. Everything felt like I had read it before, like it was redundant or repetitive or rehashed. And I know I've never read this book before, and I don't even like dragons, so I have no idea what's going on. Maybe it's that time of the month?

I do agree about the love thing, which was cool, although I was unclear what the purpose of them loving each other was; they stuck together through thick and thin, but it's not obvious to me that it required love rather than duty. If it needed to be love, I'd have preferred some sort of rationale for it.

And I didn't think Cob was as interesting a baddie to me as Ged was in the first book; his motives weren't ever quite made clear to me, and his genesis was completely obscured.

And yeah, the Arren/Lebannen/what-name-does-he-think-of-himself thing bugged me, too.

I seem to have nothing good to say about this book (other than the Sea People), but it wasn't that bad. It's just... really not my thing.