More than any other fantasy world I've ever read, Le Guin's Earthsea feels like a real place, filled with real people. Though her worldbuilding is more of a quick charcoal sketch than, say, Tolkien's intricate oil painting, there's an earthiness and solidity to her work that you just don't find very often in this genre. It's still so good and so rare and so refreshing. No one did it like her, man. No one.