I agree about the deathism of Earthsea. And it has other faults, such as the fourth volume (Tehanu) being her turning against (although not entirely) the misogyny of the whole setup of the first three, and with the zeal of the newly enlightened retconning "men evil, women good" onto it. Always Coming Home is full of fluffy woo.

But she also wrote the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which is worth finding, because it's about a standard utilitarian problem. I'm sure some philosopher posed it in exactly the form in which her story presents it, but I've not been able to track that down. Imagine a utopia — whatever utopia you like — except that it must be sustained by the suffering of a little girl confined in a cell and tortured for ever. It is part of the thought experiment that the utopia and the suffering are necessarily connected: the little girl can only be freed at the cost of ending the utopia. It is alluded to in HPMOR.