This book.
Hm.
This book's tough.

I don't think I can say I liked it, really. I liked parts of it, disliked others, but I think in the end the general feeling is... more positive. I think.

This book felt more like dissertations and thoughts on gender, power, society, etc but arranged as dialogue and character thoughts. There wasn't really much a plot, per se, until suddenly there was for a few pages, and then... back to discussing why men fear women.
Like, I get it, and honestly I enjoyed going through these "dissertations", Le Guin is a fantastic enough writer that even those are engaging and interesting to read. I almost wish the book was only those discussions and didn't have the plot events around it.

In the end it felt like this book was much, MUCH more "questions" than "answers". And yeah, the other earthsea books were as well, but this book brings a kind of... hopelessness and grief that didn't sit well with me. It's certainly an interesting book to read in the current political moment, even if I'm not a US-ian.
I expected some kind of pay off for all that going around gender, the power of women, etc, but the book kind of... just lays that to the side. And I get it, these books especially are very grounded even with all the magic, so expecting some kind of societal change from such a short span of time would be foolish.
But then there's stuff like the moment than Tenar says something along the lines of "I'll ask the dark it's name" or something like that, since she'd lived so long in the dark and they were discussing how the powers of women come from the "roots", the "dark", and, like... nothing comes of that. If anything, Tenar becomes even more hopeless and distraught as the story goes on.

I don't want the perception here to be that I think this book is bad because it didn't have a "proper" happy ending, cause the ending was kind of happy. But idk, it just didn't feel like a proper story that tied into itself and its own themes well. It felt hesitant to go full throttle into itself past all the talking and discussing of thing.s I was definitely dissappointed in that, and it makes me hesitant to pick up the last earthsea books.

The last of the "Smoke and ____" trilogy! And honestly? Probably my favourite.
This series has been all about mixing horror and supernatural elements with fun and kinda comedic narration and characters, and of the 3 books this was the least outright horror, which suited me just fine.
That less horror lean means this book reads more like an adventure than the previous two, which, granted, were still decently light hearted and adventure-y, but this one felt a touch more open ended in its adventure than the previous two, which was nice!
Open ended to say that while there was still "a big bad thing" to deal with, this book's "bad thing" was dealt with progressively throughout the whole story and not mainly at the climax, which was a fun change of pace! That coupled with this book's focus on Tony, the protag, going around and more efficiently using and learning magic and growing as a wizard gave the story a sense of buildup different from the good old "we're gonna have this big confrontation at the end!!!" which felt really good to read through.

There is still a big fight at the end though. Of course.

This book, as the final book in the trilogy (and the whole Henry Fitzroy universe too) also wraps up things very nicely! Most characters are given stuff to do, including some of the smaller characters from the previous books, and the ending felt very satisfying even if it did leave space for more stories to be told.
I ended the book really wanting to spend more time in that world, but at the same time fully satisfied with what we got! I am a touch sad that there's nothing left to read here though. These books were very fun.