If Tenar shielding burned, wary Therru and standing up to Aspen’s predation moved you, you’ll love how Sybel, a reclusive sorceress, chooses to raise the endangered child Tamlorn in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Like Tenar on Gont, Sybel’s power isn’t just magic—it’s resolve, tenderness, and the courage to defy men who would control her. McKillip’s luminous, intimate prose echoes the gentler, domestic spaces of Tehanu, while the confrontations over who has the right to shape a child’s fate will ring strikingly familiar.

If you appreciated how Tehanu unfolds slowly—Tenar tending fields, watching over Therru, village whispers simmering until danger surfaces—then the measured, wintry rise of Vasya’s gift in The Bear and the Nightingale will be your jam. As in Gont’s everyday rhythms before Aspen strikes, Arden’s tale lingers on hearth, forest, and rumor until the old powers can’t be ignored, delivering that same quiet-to-peril crescendo anchored in one girl’s emerging strength.

If Ged’s return to Gont without magic—and Tenar’s grief for Ogion—drew you to the book’s inward battles, The Curse of Chalion offers a similarly profound reckoning. Cazaril, scarred by captivity, seeks a quiet life only to be drafted into protecting a princess—much as caretaking finds Tenar. The miracles here are personal and harrowing, with gods and curses testing resolve the way Aspen’s coercion tests Tenar’s. It’s thoughtful, humane fantasy where recovery and moral choice become the true acts of power.

If Therru’s revelation of her true nature—and Ged relearning who he is without wizardry—was your heartbeat in Tehanu, you’ll relish Maia’s quiet ascension in The Goblin Emperor. Thrust from neglect into an unwanted throne, Maia must define himself with grace rather than force, much as Tenar insists on her own name and worth in the face of Aspen and the village men. It’s a gentle, court-bound journey where kindness becomes power and selfhood is the victory.

If you loved how everyday chores on Gont—goats, gardens, a child’s care—brushed up against dragonfire and old names in Tehanu, The Ocean at the End of the Lane captures that same small-scale magic. A man revisits a childhood farmhouse and recalls a neighbor family whose ‘ordinary’ lives hide deep, perilous wonder—echoing Tenar’s kitchen-table courage before Aspen and the men who hurt Therru. It’s tender, eerie, and rooted in the sanctity of a home fiercely protected.