This is very good - as this series goes on, the characterisation improves no end. Even Ged is tolerable, though he is, as usual, the least interesting character here. But Lebannen, Tenar, and Alder are very well drawn. Le Guin's prose remains a thing of quiet beauty, also, so that alone makes this worth reading. I do think the plot may not be quite as successful, though. The confrontation between the dragons and the people of Earthsea has been a long time coming, and I appreciate that there is compromise and good sense on both sides, but the element of the wall and the liberation of the dead does not affect me in the way that perhaps it should. Certainly it is difficult to compare it with, for instance, the outstandingly lovely freeing of the dead from their sterile eternity in Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass and not have it come off worse. The wonderful restraint that Le Guin shows in her prose can sometimes damp down, I think, the emotion of the big moments, and I think it does so here - although it does not help that the climax of this novel, for me, seems a little rushed. But even so, it's still an excellent book... if not, perhaps, a perfect one.