My streak of loving every Earthsea book that primarily features someone other than Ged continues. (I'm sorry, but he's routinely the least interesting thing about this series.) Anyway, the stories collected here cover a range of time in the history of the Archipelago, and there's a strong focus on restriction. Namely, the difference between the magics associated with men and women, and how this difference is basically enforced by social and gender constructs - the magic men do is important and large, while the magic women do is small and petty. That sort of thing. This is something Le Guin has covered before in the Earthsea books, and in Tales From Earthsea this is reinforced. Particularly well illustrated in the text is the impact such an imposed (and fundamentally baseless) power structure has on individuals - how it limits women and cripples men, how neither gender really benefits from it. And this is interesting thematically, and it's been one of the most attractive themes for me throughout the books, but even so it's not the main appeal here. Le Guin's prose is just so polished. There's nothing disjointed about it... not the tiniest note. It's so smooth and so restrained, so subtle and so quiet... it's an absolute pleasure to read.