The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2)

Author - Ursula K. Le Guin ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Mass Market Paperback Book item from Simon Pulse was reviewed on 9-Oct-2008.

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1) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. The Tombs of Atuan is very different from A Wizard of Earthsea. It focuses on a young woman who has spent her life cloistered in the tombs of gods who she serves but doesn´t know. Just as the reader feels completely miserable at the state of this disillusioned young lady, Ged (who nobody would describe as particularly cheerful or up-beat), arrives and brings with him a much-needed ray of sunshine, even though he spends most of the book under the earth. After Ged´s arrival, things start to slowly make more sense to Tenar and it is interesting to watch her well-developed character gradually move from darkness to light.

This is a slow-paced book. There´s not a lot of action until the end, but Ged´s quest in the tombs is related to the rest of the Earthsea series, so it´s valuable in that sense. And, of course, an Ursula Le Guin is always a pleasure to read and this audiobook version is very good. --FantasyLiterature.net¤

2) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. This is the second book of the earthsea cycle. The main character is not Ged the mage, but Tenar the first priestess of an old cult. It´s an uncomplicated story about human feelings (particularly the coming of age of the main character, the crucial choosing of one´s future and trust). The magic is present all through it without any extraordinary manifestations, such believable is Le Guin´s wizardry. It´s an easy reading that can be easily accomplished in a full day.
This edition is a sturdy one and will resist well the hazards a book is exposed to, but the paper lacks whiteness and is of a harsh type.¤

3) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. It´s rare, but sometimes a novel will move me deeply. Neil Gaiman´s London Underground spoke to me. Some of Paul Park´s early works touched me. The Tombs of Atuan was a story that resonated with my life, and was powerful to me because of that.

This, of course, is a book about tombs. We follow the heroine, a girl who has been eaten, whose un-name means, "The Eaten One." Her life was taken from her at an early age, and she is now queen of a cult of meaningless worship, mistress of airless passages, serving gods that unexist as nameless shadows. Her court is a useless appendage to a king who long since consolidated his power and disconnected her court. She has no real memories or life experiences, but she does walk around in dark tombs, looking for treasure or some elusive meaning there.

The book is powerful because it shows the id of a young girl, glowing like a bright star among the depression and death all around her, that were given to her as her social role and her name. It inverts the Western concept of the id, of the individual´s deepest desires, as evil, and of society´s rule taming and civilizing the individual through the conscious ego. It´s inspiring to see a book where a girl can choose to be good, given this situation, due not to any role model, but due to her true nature. And yet, the characters are morally ambiguous, like nature, like real actual people. The heroine does some awful things. The hero of the previous book -- Ged -- arrives as a thief in the night.

In many ways this is a book about the girl who was Arha, the Eaten One, and a study of her character. It isn´t a great novel in the sense of portraying character alone, but it is great in how it pulls in elements of muted horror, in the symmetries between Arha, the tombs, her life, and the unspoken depression these evoke, in Le Guin´s amazing abilities in pacing, of lending an epic feel, of evoking the whole story like it were a shadow cast on a wall, of indirectly pulling in Jungian archetypes left and right. The whole book has this powerful, visceral urgency to it. But I think what really made this book for me is that Arha´s id shines, amidst darkness.¤

4) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. The sequel to A Wizard of Earthsea is a little disappointing after the first book, and changes fairly significantly.

It shifts focus from the mature wizard Ged, to a young woman. She is a member of a matriarchal cult, and they end up trapping and imprisoning Ged after he comes there on a mission.

She has to come to realise what is more important.


¤

5) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. This is wonderful novel, but it´s not for everyone. A reviewer below mentioned this being a "swords and sorcery" novel. That´s dead wrong, though. There´s not a sword to be found in it, really. There is magic, of course, but it manifests itself in a very different way and at a very different tempo than true "swords and sorcery" novels.

What I love about this are the very things that some readers - often male readers, I´d wager - don´t quite like about it. I like the very many ways it´s DIFFERENT than anything else I´ve read in fantasy. Honestly, for the first half of there´s no high adventure at all. It´s the slow story a young girl indoctrinated into a dark and foreboding religion. Yes, a young GIRL. The main character of this novel knows no magic, doesn´t own a sword, isn´t out to change the world. That´s refreshingly different than most fantasy.

Add to that that the hero figure, Ged, doesn´t even enter the novel until well into it. And add to that that when he´s introduced he´s largely powerless and at the mercy of the young woman, Tenar. How their relationship develops and how it becomes a quest novel drives the later half of the book, but still LeGuin never takes us too far from Tenar and the fact that everything she´s experiencing is completely changing the world as she knew it.

For those reasons - and more - this is a wonderful novel. If any of this sounds interesting to you please buy this and read it. Or read it again if - like me - you´re an adult that first read Earthsea stuff years ago. It holds up wonderfully and it has plenty to appeal to adults as well as to younger readers.

I´m a fan, and before long I´ll pick up the next one and journey back to Earthsea again.¤

6) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. WHEN YOUNG TENAR is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away -- home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs´ greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.

With millions of copies sold, Ursula K. Le Guin´s Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere. Complex, innovative, and deeply moral, this quintessential fantasy sequence has been compared with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and has helped make Le Guin one of the most distinguished fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. She lives in Portland, Oregon.¤

7) Mass Market Paperback Book The Tombs of Atuan (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 2) by Simon Pulse. Often compared to Tolkien´s Middle-earth or Lewis´s Narnia, Ursula K. Le Guin´s Earthsea is a stunning fantasy world that grabs quickly at our hearts, pulling us deeply into its imaginary realms. Four books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu) tell the whole Earthsea cycle--a tale about a reckless, awkward boy named Sparrowhawk who becomes a wizard´s apprentice after the wizard reveals Sparrowhawk´s true name. The boy comes to realize that his fate may be far more important than he ever dreamed possible. Le Guin challenges her readers to think about the power of language, how in the act of naming the world around us we actually create that world. Teens, especially, will be inspired by the way Le Guin allows her characters to evolve and grow into their own powers.

In this second book of Le Guin´s Earthsea series, readers will meet Tenar, a priestess to the "Nameless Ones" who guard the catacombs of the Tombs of Atuan. Only Tenar knows the passageways of this dark labyrinth, and only she can lead the young wizard Sparrowhawk, who stumbles into its maze, to the greatest treasure of all. Will she?¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 6-Nov-2008, 06898453679780689845369, 410-5X0-430-320-670-4X1-8

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