This story is so hard to rate, because it is excellent - the writing is so much more personal and deep than in the previous books in the trilogy. If you are looking at the technical parts of the story, Tehanu is much better than the beginning stories, and you will go back to the first trilogy, read it and wonder why she couldn't have made the style more like it. It is an good starting point for people who are not accustomed to fantasy, or who like reality to have a place in a fairy tale.
The problem that everyone has with this book, in my opinion, is how harsh it is, how human the characters. We who loved the first book will be shocked and dismayed at how frail and... and real our heroes have become. Ged without magic, and utterly without power really hurts to read about. Reading these characters, after having loved who they were, is like having your dreams shattered. The magic is torn brutally out of the fairy tale, and what we have left isn't pleasant. I kept reading the story only because I was certain Le Guin wouldn't let what was once a beloved story for adults and children alike become such a hard, ugly story about life and pain and hope. She just couldn't, but she did. Reading a fantasy in which your heroes are broken and humbled is almost as frightening as watching your parents cry, or seeing what was once a beloved place be torn down to make something like a freeway, black and ugly and full of smog. I kept wishing for the dream that was clear and innocent and beautiful in the first books to come back, but it never did. And though some people might laugh at me for being so childish, I think that the reason we all loved the first books was that it was so much a story that included our fairy tale champions, the characters that we could love both as children and adults, that we could share with our kids. And it gave us these characters without giving the story a predictable, black-and-white cut-and-dry plot. Our heroes made mistakes, and were sometimes foolish and stubborn, which made them all the more treasured and endearing. Tehanu is hard and painful and too real to be connected with the first books. The reason, to me at least, for reading fantasy is not to see life, which is frequently harsh and oppresive and can be cruel with its promises, but to see hope and beauty and dignity which is all too rare in our world. There are enough stories of grief and suffering out there as it is, in stories and out of them.
Adults who have never read and loved the first books might like this story. They might see it as a superb example of life, exhausting and petty and cruel at times, being brought into a field of books which normally contains simple, predictable, happy endings of good over bad. And it does, but in my opinion the fairy tale and innocence and fantasy were better left standing, not brought down and dragged in the dust and mire.
