Ursula Le Guin -- S/D, etc.

I don't think I've ever actually read The Beginning Place, but that description of the dragon reminds me of the sea-monster in Kipling's "A Matter of Fact":

Then he said with a little cluck in his throat, ‘Ah me! It is blind. Hur illa! That thing is blind,’ and a murmur of pity went through us all, for we could see that the thing on the water was blind and in pain. Something had gashed and cut the great sides cruelly and the blood was spurting out. The gray ooze of the undermost sea lay in the monstrous wrinkles of the back, and poured away in sluices. The blind white head flung back and battered the wounds, and the body in its torment rose clear of the red and gray waves till we saw a pair of quivering shoulders streaked with weed and rough with shells, but as white in the clear spaces as the hairless, maneless, blind, toothless head.

I don't think it's top tier le guin, I'm quite surprised to find it was written after most of her best known works.

I thought I was reaching the end of her substantial bibliography (excluding poetry, children's books and non fiction) but it looks like there's half a dozen novels I've yet to read, and two or three short story collections.