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

9 people found this helpful

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.

6 people found this helpful

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.

5 people found this helpful

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.

4 people found this helpful

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).

9 people found this helpful

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.

3 people found this helpful

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.

2 people found this helpful

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.

1 person found this helpful

It was alright

I still prefer her original trilogy, but the later books (this one being #6) were good if you crave more Earthsea. The performance was great, except that the narrator mispronounced windkey, which bothered me.

missed Jenny!

The story was very enjoyable, but I really missed the narration by Jenny S, who narrated the last few. This narrator was okay, but was inconsistent with some pronunciations throughout the whole story, which I found pretty distracting. Overall, well worth the listen!