The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) Mass Market Paperback – September 1, 2001

It is hard for me to comment on such a big book as this one.The Earthsea chronicles were the very first fantasy material I read and they touched me so deeply that they defined the kind of genre I would look for to read in many many years to come. The notion of magic that is presented in these books is among the most sober and smart that I have found. For a worthy followup, magic-wise, check the books written by Patrick Rothfuss.In this book we follow a priestess whose name/soul has been eaten, and to whom a place of power has been given, as she sees her tight small world collapse when outside forces (a wizard) come in looking for part of an ancient artifact hidden in the place.The pace of the book is measured and one gets to really know the ways and tastes of the Place before anything starts to happen. The part where a confused woman speaks with a goat is among the best jokes I have ever met.I read this text for the first time more than 20 years ago. I am now rereading it to my son, who, at 6, still finds the language a bit challenging, and sometimes goes directly to sleep, and I find myself enjoying the book again with fresh eyes after not reading it for a long period of time.If you have never read it, please do, you will be delighted and enlightened and puzzled and entertained and shocked and set in a state of wonder and come out of it a better person. If you don't know the series, start by reading "A wizard of Earthsea".Next to this book I cannot stop recommending a rather uncommon work by Vonda N McIntyre called "Dreamsnake".

This is the third book in Ursula K. Le Guin's fantasy Earthsea series. In the first, A Wizard of Earthsea, we met Ged/Sparrowhawk as a young child who would be trained as a wizard. In the second, The Tombs of Atuan, we scarcely meet him at all until near the end when he encounters Tenar, the high priestess of Atuan, and together they take the lost half of the sacred ring of Erreth-Akbe from the said tombs. The whole ring, when reforged by Ged's magic, will help to ensure peace in Earthsea. Now, we meet him as a middle-aged man in his full power as a wizard. He is the Archmage (I imagine it as something like the pope) and he is a dragonlord, one who can ride dragons.But all is not well in Earthsea. The world has fallen on hard times and darkness threatens to overtake it. The wizards who have kept things on a peaceful, even keel are losing their powers. Ged is determined to find out the cause of this disastrous turn of events.He embarks on a treacherous journey to the ends of Earthsea to discover the cause of the evil that threatens to overwhelm his world. With him, he takes a young man named Arren, a prince of Enlad. In order to fulfill their quest, they must travel to the farthest reaches of their world and into the realm of death itself.I have noted in my previous reviews of this series that it is unusual for a fantasy series in that it does not feature death and destruction on a massive scale and the protagonist does not seek the annihilation of anyone other than the evil force that threatens Earthsea. That continues to be true in this entry. His philosophy - and this book contains a lot of philosophical musings - is rather one of acceptance. Acceptance of what life brings and, finally, acceptance of death as a part of life. Ged says at one point, "A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it."And again:“Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?”This was, without a doubt, my least favorite of the three books I've read. I began to find the prose really labored and difficult to read. Often I would find myself losing focus halfway through a passage and would have to stop and think, "Now what was this about?" Sometimes I had to reread a section to remind myself. Certainly this could partly be my fault as a reader, but clean, crisp prose would have made my reading task a lot easier.There were parts of the book that I did really enjoy, my favorite being the descriptions of the Children of the Sea, people who live entirely on rafts that are connected together and float about in the great ocean, following the gray whales in their migration. It was a pleasant interlude in a book that otherwise did not give me great pleasure.

Currently reading all the series that are linked to the Legends anthologies (with the exceptions of Stephen King and Anne McCaffrey, as I'm in the process of reading all of their works [and I've already read all of the Dragonrider stories written so far... Todd, I'd LOVE to see a continuation of the sort of cliffhanger Anne left with her last solo novel]).This one was harder than the first to get through. As she wrote in the afterward (written 40 years or so after the book was originally published), the book was one of the first solo focus books written strictly from a female point of view, and it was written REALISTICALLY, to boot, acknowledging the patriarchal and misogynistic worlds the heroine and the writer both exist in. As a writer, you're advised to write what you know, and the book definitely fits that mold: it's a bleak and disheartening look at a girl that, while ostensibly having autonomous power, is ultimately constrained by the reality she's come to recognize... she genuinely has no REAL power. Yes, she has "absolute" power in her one fiefdom, but outside of that little word, bo one else recognizes it as power. With the help of a protagonist from the first book in the series, she slowly comes to this realization on her own, and learns to trust to help them BOTH become free (her for the first time in her young life).Even though it WAS a difficult slog, it has opened my eyes a little bit more to the difficulties women face in just trying to live their own lives, let alone improve themselves. The way things are going, it's looking like the props women have been getting recently are being completely undermined by our society, and that's not good... for ANYone.