Editors Reads Verdict
A quiet, profound conclusion to the Earthsea sequence — Le Guin returns to the question of death that drove the third book with greater wisdom and a willingness to grant the dead something more than the grey land of shadows.
What We Loved
- The theological and philosophical questions about the afterlife are handled with genuine depth
- The conclusion to the Earthsea sequence is earned — Le Guin finds an answer to the series' central question that is honest and satisfying
- Tehanu's nature is finally revealed, and the revelation is appropriately mythological
Minor Drawbacks
- The novel requires familiarity with all the preceding Earthsea books to achieve its full effect
- The ensemble of characters from across the series may be disorienting for readers who don't remember the earlier books
Key Takeaways
- → An afterlife imagined without hope is a cosmological error — the grey land of Earthsea was built on a mistake
- → Dragons and humans are different aspects of the same thing, which is why the boundary between their worlds is more permeable than either recognizes
- → Transformation is not destruction — what changes completely may still be continuous with what it was
| Author | Ursula K. Le Guin |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Harvest Books |
| Pages | 246 |
| Published | September 1, 2001 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy, Literary Fiction |
The Other Wind Review
The Other Wind is the sixth and final Earthsea novel, published in 2001 — more than thirty years after A Wizard of Earthsea — and it returns to the question that has haunted the series since The Farthest Shore: what is the nature of death in Earthsea, and what awaits in the dry land where the dead go?
The answer, in The Farthest Shore, was dispiriting: the dead exist in a grey land without joy, without memory, without the ability to speak. Ged’s sacrifice in that novel restored the world but could not change what death was. Le Guin had lived with that conclusion for decades, and The Other Wind is her reopening of the question — a willingness to acknowledge that the answer she gave was incomplete.
A young sorcerer named Alder comes to Roke haunted by the dead — specifically by his dead wife, who reaches to him through the wall between worlds. His petition sets in motion a gathering of the series’ major characters: Tenar and Ged, now old; Tehanu (whose nature this novel finally reveals); Irian; the King of All the Isles. The question they must answer is why the wall is thinning and what lies on the other side.
What Le Guin offers in The Other Wind is a theology of Earthsea revised toward hope — a reconception of what death is and what happens after that doesn’t pretend the grey land wasn’t real but suggests it was built on a mistake, a wrong agreement made long ago that can be unmade. The cosmological revelation is handled with the gentleness of late Le Guin: nothing is forced, the characters find the answer by being willing to ask the question again.
It is a quiet conclusion to one of the greatest fantasy sequences, and it is exactly right.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Other Wind" about?
The sixth and final Earthsea novel revisits the question that has haunted the series since The Farthest Shore — the nature of death and the afterlife in the world of the Archipelago. A sorcerer haunted by the dead comes to Roke, and the answer found will transform Earthsea's understanding of what comes after.
What are the key takeaways from "The Other Wind"?
An afterlife imagined without hope is a cosmological error — the grey land of Earthsea was built on a mistake Dragons and humans are different aspects of the same thing, which is why the boundary between their worlds is more permeable than either recognizes Transformation is not destruction — what changes completely may still be continuous with what it was
Is "The Other Wind" worth reading?
A quiet, profound conclusion to the Earthsea sequence — Le Guin returns to the question of death that drove the third book with greater wisdom and a willingness to grant the dead something more than the grey land of shadows.
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