It's strange, now, to revisit the first four Earthsea books in the unit I first encountered them. The first three stories are clearly of a kind, and if their navigation of various questions about power are now almost too familiar their strength as horror novels has perhaps been underrated. From the proto It Follows horror of A Wizard of Earthsea to the zombie ambience of Hort Town, this trilogy casts a long shadow and I still found myself creeped out while I was dwelling in it.

Tehanu used to feel like a closing chapter to all that, but with Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind out there doing what they do it now works as the start of a second cycle. Tehanu's horrors aren't the transcendental nightmare of the first three novels but rather the grim cruelties of real world misogyny - rape, abuse, abundant disinterest. Le Guin's prose is different here too, less certain, more obviously indebted to some of the author's more traditional literary influences - Austen, Tolstoy, Woolf. More attention is given here to questions about who will inherit the farm and who will think to do the dishes, and the result is one of my favourite of Le Guin's works, an earthy, inquisitive novel that allows for the possibility that life might be lived amongst the horror.