A Wizard of Earthsea

I am teaching my son (oldest) how to properly critique something (in his case, video games) with the understanding of the lens of time. ie. one cannot properly critique a lot of video games or literature written or created decades ago under the same lens we would critique something created today. Some of the things which we look for today would not even occur to many writers fifty, sixty, seventy years ago and so judging them on those merits is pointless.

Ok, so with that out of the way.

It's important to note, for those who have never read Earthsea, that the books were written in the early sixties and published in the late sixties and into the seventies. Le Guin was a trailblazer in Science fiction and fantasy. And she deserves all the kudos for that.
But this is still a book written in the sixties with stylistic flavor taken from both earlier works (Tolkien definitely has an influence here as does CS Lewis and I would argue a touch of Lovecraft, but only in the foreboding language detailing the deader lands. That may have been unintentional - I have no clue if Le Guin read Lovecraft).

That means that there is a *lot* of telling us what's going on through narration, not through action. It also means that many things which other authors would take entire chapters to explore are done in the space of a few paragraphs. For example, Ged's schooling (which would later go on to inspire things like Harry Potter no doubt) was literally one chapter. Dealing with the Dragon of Pendor was about three pages (three awesome pages, but the whole chapter was called the Dragon of Pendor and it was about 20 pages long!). Le Guin spends as long (or actually longer) detailing the ocean they sail on than detailing the climax and the thing they hunt, so it makes for a weird atmosphere.

Now, does that make the book 'bad'? Of course not! But stylistically, it does take some getting used to if you are more accustomed to the pace of modern fantasy or indeed, much modern writing. It also makes it bloody hard to judge based on stars. Did I enjoy it? Somewhat. It kind of dragged in places and had weird pacing. Does it deserve its place as a cornerstone of fantasy today? Absolutely - you can see so much work done in the last twenty years drawing influence from Earthsea.
In short, Earthsea is both a product of its time and a trailblazer; old fashioned in its way and yet you can see how it sparked off new ideas. Much like Ged himself by the end, there is the dichotomy of caution and tradition in the delivery and pride in the new and unexplored.