Cannot recommend? Or cannot recommend enough? I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but that’s exactly the sort of brain typo that I would make, giving my audience exactly the opposite claim to what I’d intended, and based on context, I think the latter is what you were going for?
I’ve heard of Earthsea, but had no idea what it was about. Now I may need to pick it up. I rather enjoyed a more recent story with a similar plot, written by an author with, shall we say, less progressive opinions.
I’ve sort of been forced over to Mac (not that it’s a bad thing, just a thing), and Paint.NET is perhaps my biggest loss in that transition. I’ve loved that program since its early days, and is always one of my first installs on any new Windows installation.