I loved the first two Earthsea books -- actually, I think the second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is my favorite -- but was meh on the third one, The Farthest Shore. Then the fourth book came along and destroyed all the pleasure I'd taken in the first three. I'm told that the fifth book, which is made up of short stories, probably won't make me want to smash things the way Tehanu did. But you know, once bitten...

And it was very kind of you and everybody else not to point out my utter stupidity when I referred to "the fourth book of the Earthsea trilogy" in my earlier post. Man, I need to get to bed earlier...