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  • The Other Wind

  • The Earthsea Cycle, Book 6
  • Written by: Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
  • Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (26 ratings)

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The Other Wind

Written by: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
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Publisher's Summary

The sorcerer Alder fears sleep. The dead are pulling him to them at night. Through him they may free themselves and invade Earthsea.

Alder seeks advice from Ged, once Archmage. Ged tells him to go to Tenar, Tehanu, and the young king at Havnor. They are joined by amber-eyed Irian, a fierce dragon able to assume the shape of a woman.

The threat can be confronted only in the Immanent Grove on Roke, the holiest place in the world, and there the king, hero, sage, wizard, and dragon make a last stand.

In this final book of the Earthsea Cycle, Le Guin combines her magical fantasy with a profoundly human, earthly, humble touch.

©2001 Ursula K. Le Guin (P)2017 Recorded Books

What listeners say about The Other Wind

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A truly great conclusion to the world of Earthsea

Samuel Roukin does a great performance of this book.
As far as the content goes I feel like this story was more of a response to the confusion from Tehanu, since Ursula K. Le Guin mentioned she didn't intend to write anymore of this story and some fans weren't very pleased with the previous installment, although I thought it was great and made the world much more fleshed out.
However, it was a great conclusion to the world as a whole and left me feeling pretty sad in the end. I will never not be amazed by the depth Le Guin dedicates to her stories, she truly had an amazing mind.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent conclusion to the Earthsea Cycle

I definitely recommend listening or reading this novel yourself. It’s an excellent book. The narrator, unfortunately, fails to make Tenar a contiguous character as presented by the two previous narrators. She seems weak and passive in this performance, which is not how she is written or performed in the previous audiobooks. Also, the narrator alternates his pronunciations of various names which is confusing and somewhat annoying. I much preferred the previous readers’ performances and wish this one was at the standard of the first four. Nevertheless, still worth a listen.

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  • Julianne
  • 2018-06-06

Obnoxious narrator

I love the earthsea world. Unfortunately this narrator often put in tones of condesention and arrogance that were not there. Also his voice when narrating a woman's lines was down right insulting. Also he was inconsistent in how he pronounced one of the main characters names, having two dramatically different ways he pronounced it. I only finished this book because I've listen to the rest of the series (narrated by better narrators).

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10 people found this helpful

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  • toni
  • 2017-08-23

love earthsea! sorry to see the series end.

I love this book. A happy and bittersweet ending to a wonderful series. My one complaint was the narrator's inability to decide how he wanted to pronounce the name"Irian". Eye-RYE'n? EAR-ee-on?? Either is fine with me, though most performances seem to go with the latter. But switching back and forth, even within the same short passage, was an oddity and a bit of a distraction from a job otherwise well done

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  • Wendy G. Anderson
  • 2020-05-01

Fascinating Tale Wrecked by Terrible Narration

Any lover of fantasy will love the Earthsea Cycle, and it was with eager anticipation that I began listening to this final story in the series. The story is superb -- perhaps a bit slow to get going, but really good and, ultimately, really compelling. But the narrator! It's clear that he isn't familiar with the cycle at all. He mispronounces names and titles constantly. If that weren't bad enough, there's one character whose name he pronounces three different ways, sometimes in the same paragraph! It's dreadfully distracting and I'm terribly disappointed. It's really too bad that the last Earthsea book has such poor narration.

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7 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Tim Peierls
  • 2019-07-19

Distracting mispronunciations

Distracting and inconsistent mispronunciations and odd character voice choices mar an otherwise entertaining read of a great story. Was there no editor around to correct the reader? A female (i.e., higher-voiced) reader would have been more appropriate.

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7 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • R. A. Steele
  • 2019-06-29

A decent listen, even jarringly pronounced.

It would have been nice if the reader had checked name pronunciations from the previous readings so that the listener wouldn't have to work out which character he was speaking of. I won't say he pronounced them wrong, but someone did, and since this is last book in a series, the effort should have been taken to make the readings consistent.

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4 people found this helpful

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  • BMWilson
  • 2018-05-07

Small things cast a big shadow

This was amazing. This brought a return to the magnitude of the original Earthsea trilogy while combining it with the simplicity of the human experience that we found in Tehanu. Like small things that cast a big shadow, so does this book.

Roukin’s narrative performance was also very much of quality. All in all this book has become a favorite. I never felt I would say this, but Ged’s tale feels complete.

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Bob
  • 2020-07-19

Good, but...

The story was not bad. the characters were mostly known, so LeGuin could further develop them. The writing was engaging, as always. But there wasn't enough to be said and done to fill a book. Truly, Earthsea should have ended after the third book. The first three were incredible. LeGuin had more story to tell, but didn't realize it all at once, unfortunately. She could have wrapped the last three books up in one, and it probably would have been much better. All in all, this book was better than the last two, and worth reading, but won't be worth reading again. I'll read the initial trilogy, on the other hand, many more times. Masterpieces.

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2 people found this helpful

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  • Robbie Stafuer
  • 2023-02-21

Story deserves a better narrator

The story is wonderful. It deserves a reader who can do it credit, and provide the pacing and intensity that are called for by the writing. I agree with the reviewer who took exception to his demeaning performances of the female characters. The inconsistent pronunciation of a major character’s name is inexcusable. Nonetheless, I listened to the entire book because of the incredible story and writing.

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  • J. Angel
  • 2020-06-23

Great ending to Earthsea main sequence

The final Earthsea novel finishes strong with many loose plot threads tied up, and an emotional but hopeful ending.

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  • Marley
  • 2023-10-09

Great ending to a great series

Really enjoyed the book. A little annoyed by the narrator changing the way he pronounces names at various times throughout the book.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2023-05-31

A fitting ending to the second trilogy of Earthsea, shame that it changed narrator along the way

I loved the deep elderly voice of the previous narrator which lent gravitas to the characters and she was female evoking the viewpoint Ursula Le Guin had chosen for this changing world she created.

I was disappointed to find that this narrator was a male then I got used to his voice and was able to ignore the change, up to the point when he started mixing up the characters voices (e.g. using the same soft lighter voice for a male character previously depicted with a deeper voice, just after he used for a female character), he did not distinguish enough the voices between the various characters but mostly what annoyed me was how he pronounced the name “Irian” sometimes as “E”r”e”an (as in the sound for “e”mail) and others like “I”r”I”an as in the sound “I” from “I” am.

The story links all the trilogy elements together not in a suffocating mail chain but in an exquisitely Woven tapestry. The “Equilibrium” is re-established. Though I expected that it would be clearly stated that women would be accepted back into Roke so that yet another division could be healed.

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