A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the first SFF authors that I read, so I'm not sure why I've never read her Earthsea series. I recently saw the slim first volume A Wizard of Earthsea in my college library and decided that it could fulfill several of my challenges, so I checked it out. I liked it very much, but I don't feel as if it lives up to the world-building that she does in her Hainish novels. The reasons for this might be the YA audience, but I don't really want to speculate. What I generally like about Le Guin is that she does "character" and "world" in tandem so well. However, A Wizard focuses much more on character and the "world" element is much more about the world's elements, the sea, the cold, etc, than about the rules that make Earthsea work. It is a nice coming of age story, and one can see Le Guin's influences on J. K. Rowling. I will probably get around to the rest of them, but I will not be in a rush.