Having breezed through the prior two Earthsea novels, I found it incredibly hard to do the same with The Farthest Shore. It took me quite some time to understand why, for - to echo fellow reviewers - the writing was as beautiful as ever and the settings once again opened up another - previously unexplored - pocket of Earthsea. But the characters, even our beloved Sparrowhawk, felt distant and not as relatable as before. Perhaps it is because I could not connect to Arren, through whose adoring eyes we now see Sparrowhawk, perhaps it was the size of the strides we took through time to get from The Tombs of Atuan to The Farthest Shore.

The themes of The Farthest Shore are, as always, in line with the general structure of an Earthsea book, for in the end, after long travels (be it through ones own heart, the world, or both) our hero(es) arrive(s) at a place seemingly outside of their own world, facing a darkness that threatens to swallow them. While the first book dealt with darkness as a manifestation of trauma you brought upon yourself (trauma from within), the second book focused on trauma forced upon you (trauma from the outside). Neither of these two explanations fits for the darkness that haunts the world in the third book: Sparrowhawk has overcome his own missteps, Tenar is nowhere to be seen, and Arren seems to have no worries in life beyond disappointing his idol (Sparrowhawk) and not yet being enough of "a man" to fill in the footsteps left by his ancestor. The darkness of the third book is one that haunts humanity outside of Earthsea as well: the fear of death, the lure of false promises and the subsequent betrayal of trust.

It took me a long time to come to the above conclusion, because at it's surface, it's clear that The Farthest Shore is full of musings on death and immortality. But as I have now realized with Ursula K. Le Guin, a lot of the lessons and philosophies she wishes to share with the reader are shrouded in symbolism and imagery. A lot of this book felt too straight-forward with what it was trying to portray, and so I started thinking it through too late into the story. It was frustrating more often than it was not, and even the dragons couldn't hold my attention. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book as I did the previous ones. I'm looking forward to rereading it and properly putting on my thinking cap to ponder meaning and symbolism once again. For now I will take a short break from Earthsea to let my mind wander a bit in more casual literature, before I return to read the well-loved and well-hated - so it seems- Tehanu.