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Arha's isolated existence as high priestess in the tombs of Atuan is jarred by a thief who seeks a special treasure.Tags
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Aquila I feel like The Unspoken Name takes The Tombs of Atuan as a starting point, but it's just the beginning of a completely different story.
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themulhern Girl escape from labyrinth with help of foreign hero.
Member Reviews
It seems the first half is often waved off as boring to a lot of readers, but I found these chapters so necessary and meaningful to Tenar's life. She's the leader of a regressive cult and believes she has no other options. If it comes off as dull it's because her life is genuinely leading nowhere up until she breaks free. I found a lot of her life and her thought patterns so similar with my experiences of religion at university, alongside the guilt that comes with it.
So beautifully written.
Ursula K. Le Guin's sparse, specific language and removed narrator are not for everyone, but I think she's a genius. In shape and plot-summary, this book, like A Wizard of Earthsea that precedes it, would seem to be a classic young adult novel. Young girl coming of age, responsibilities, decisions, new sense of self, the burdens of freedom and adulthood, etc. But this book and A Wizard of Earthsea are like koans...they plod slowly, thoughtfully, and are unimaginably powerful in their ability to tell your own story to you. I stop and sigh and realize that Le Guin is telling me about myself. This is writing that changes the world, one daydream at a time. A Wizard of Earthsea moves quickly, travels to a half-dozen different settings, and show more throws adventure at us chapter by chapter. The Tombs of Atuan takes place in one, small area. Not even a village...perhaps twenty or thirty people, with only six named characters, just living life among some temples on an acre or two of land. It is a short book, but still manages to feel like a simmer. Takes a long time to reach a boil. show less
"What she had began to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it."
Second book of the Earthsea series. Not as expansive as the first in terms of geographical scope and wizardry, more focused on the inner lives of the characters, but still great writing from Le Guin. Tenar is ripped away from her family when she's a child and taken into service of the ancient and nameless forces she works for as high priestess. When Ged, who is the protagonist in the previous book, breaks into her show more domain in search of long lost treasure she's forced to take choices against her training and conditioning and towards freedom. A sweet tale filled with wisdom and I'm envious of those who got to read these books, targeted to young adults, in their formative years, and glad that they were still available to me to read in my not-as-formative years. show less
Second book of the Earthsea series. Not as expansive as the first in terms of geographical scope and wizardry, more focused on the inner lives of the characters, but still great writing from Le Guin. Tenar is ripped away from her family when she's a child and taken into service of the ancient and nameless forces she works for as high priestess. When Ged, who is the protagonist in the previous book, breaks into her show more domain in search of long lost treasure she's forced to take choices against her training and conditioning and towards freedom. A sweet tale filled with wisdom and I'm envious of those who got to read these books, targeted to young adults, in their formative years, and glad that they were still available to me to read in my not-as-formative years. show less
Like the first book of the Earthsea series, I had childhood memories of key figures and scenes from The Tombs of Atuan, but much of the story seemed new to me in this re-read half a century later. In particular, my recollection had falsely collapsed this second book into a simple sequel with Ged as its protagonist, when in fact it is Tenar who is the main character. Ged doesn't appear at all until the fifth of twelve chapters, and even then isn't positively identified until late in the sixth. Tombs is a girl's magical bildungsroman as Wizard was a boy's.
In her 2012 afterword, Le Guin admits that the story and its heroine fall short of ideals latterly promoted for feminist fantasy. Girlbossery is nothing admirable here, and women and show more men do rely on each other for fulfillment and freedom. This lesson is bluntly symbolized by the reassembly of the two pieces of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe (even pictured on the cover of the recent edition I read). Tenar faces far more adversity than Ged did. While he was allowed to win his own power, she was given an authority that bound her into a catena of oppression. His catalyzing of her liberation could be read as a "rescue."
I have much more cultural context now than I did as a young reader to appreciate the Kargish religion that Le Guin presents. In particular, the tulku One Priestess Arha was a concept that was worked out in a convincing and intriguing way. The supernatural elements of the story are handled with a gentler touch than in the first book.
Where Wizard had Ged ranging from one end of Earthsea to another, this one takes place almost entirely in a single insular community, cut off from the wider culture and commerce of the world. Even so, some nested exposition allows Le Guin to considerably fill in the lore of her larger setting. Ged's experiences have given him stories worth sharing. He observes, "Dragons think we are amusing" (135). It's a natural outcome of the fact that the book was written in some measure to explore the throwaway allusion at the end of the first book to one of Ged's later accomplishments to have "brought back the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from the Tombs of Atuan to Havnor." show less
In her 2012 afterword, Le Guin admits that the story and its heroine fall short of ideals latterly promoted for feminist fantasy. Girlbossery is nothing admirable here, and women and show more men do rely on each other for fulfillment and freedom. This lesson is bluntly symbolized by the reassembly of the two pieces of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe (even pictured on the cover of the recent edition I read). Tenar faces far more adversity than Ged did. While he was allowed to win his own power, she was given an authority that bound her into a catena of oppression. His catalyzing of her liberation could be read as a "rescue."
I have much more cultural context now than I did as a young reader to appreciate the Kargish religion that Le Guin presents. In particular, the tulku One Priestess Arha was a concept that was worked out in a convincing and intriguing way. The supernatural elements of the story are handled with a gentler touch than in the first book.
Where Wizard had Ged ranging from one end of Earthsea to another, this one takes place almost entirely in a single insular community, cut off from the wider culture and commerce of the world. Even so, some nested exposition allows Le Guin to considerably fill in the lore of her larger setting. Ged's experiences have given him stories worth sharing. He observes, "Dragons think we are amusing" (135). It's a natural outcome of the fact that the book was written in some measure to explore the throwaway allusion at the end of the first book to one of Ged's later accomplishments to have "brought back the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from the Tombs of Atuan to Havnor." show less
There seem to me to have been some extraordinary storytelling choices made with this book. Sideline the hero of the previous volume, have him absent for nearly a third of the book, tell the entire story from the perspective of a young priestess raised to worship dark and terrible powers in a warlike expanding empire. It's as if the sequel to Star Wars had been told from the point of view of a trainee Sith and Luke Skywalker turned up just after having his hand chopped off, an invalid in an Imperial prison. And yet it is a beautiful book about learning that the things you have believed and taken for granted all your life are far narrower, more constrained and fundamentally strange, if not downright bad, than you could have imagined, and show more that your life in devotion to this thing, which you never had any choice about anyway, has been wasted. Haunting and written with an attention to craft and detail that makes the heart ache and the mind snap to attention, this is one of the great novels about breaking free. show less
If this were a more adult-oriented story, Tenar (I refuse to call her Arha) would have been more conscious of her loss of family, more resistant to her fate, more difficult to control. For those reasons I took this story rather lightly at first, but now I think I was wrong to do so. Someone who resists from the beginning is only seeking an opportunity to escape. What happens to Tenar is more nefarious. She is given enough power, just enough freedom in her world within its walls, that she can believe herself powerful, believe herself free. The walls of her trap are almost invisible to her, making it that much more difficult to escape. On some subconscious level she is aware of it and oppressed by it, even as she wonders at Penthe's show more dreams. Her dismissal of the world beyond the walls, beyond the desert, is an attempted dismissal of her own inner doubts. She defers viewing the secret underground treasure in order to preserve at least one last mystery, to make the world she is confined to feel larger than it really is. It is not until Ged's arrival that she feels its true smallness.
The back cover blurb positions Ged as Tenar's rescuer, but I am more interested in how Tenar rescues herself. She preserves Ged's life, this symbol of true freedom. Confronted with an identity crisis, she makes her choice after it is clear that Ged has the power but not the strength to make her obey his will. I read the final escape not just as the Nameless Ones' last grasp, but as Tenar's final answer to whether she will cross beyond the boundaries of all that she knows. I felt sorry for Manan, but the contrast in fates is necessary - someone who never questions, never desires escape. Two chapters of anticlimax feels a bit much in a book this short, but there's the end of a trilogy to prepare for on top of the nice link we're given to the first book. While this was effectively the continuing adventures of Ged, it would have made for a dull tale to hear this story from him. LeGuin moved the viewpoint to Tenar, made her sympathetic, and gave us a new (then scarce) heroine to celebrate. show less
The back cover blurb positions Ged as Tenar's rescuer, but I am more interested in how Tenar rescues herself. She preserves Ged's life, this symbol of true freedom. Confronted with an identity crisis, she makes her choice after it is clear that Ged has the power but not the strength to make her obey his will. I read the final escape not just as the Nameless Ones' last grasp, but as Tenar's final answer to whether she will cross beyond the boundaries of all that she knows. I felt sorry for Manan, but the contrast in fates is necessary - someone who never questions, never desires escape. Two chapters of anticlimax feels a bit much in a book this short, but there's the end of a trilogy to prepare for on top of the nice link we're given to the first book. While this was effectively the continuing adventures of Ged, it would have made for a dull tale to hear this story from him. LeGuin moved the viewpoint to Tenar, made her sympathetic, and gave us a new (then scarce) heroine to celebrate. show less
In the second installment in the Earthsea series, a girl is declared to be the reincarnated Priestess of a remote, timeless place and is taken from her family at an early age. She grows up learning its customs and believes herself to have great power, but has very limited experience of the actual world. She’s also got a rival in the form of the head Priestess of the State, which has its political power increasing.
What could have been a conventional coming-of-age tale in less skillful hands than Le Guin’s becomes a critique of cloistered, religious institutions that deny reality and don’t affirm life and joy, and I love the book for that. Much of the action takes place in subterranean tombs and an enormous labyrinth, all in show more darkness, which is telling. The young woman administers ancient rites with little meaning, and has no qualms about ceremonially executing enemies of the State who have been brought there. Her personal flaws and the flaws of the religious system she finds herself in are evident. There is real darkness here, and I don’t just mean the claustrophobic, blind environment Le Guin successfully creates. Just as in ‘A Wizard of Earthsea,’ the first book in the series, there are elements of identity and finding one’s self, but there is also profound disillusionment and loss of faith. It’s a mature, very intelligent work with a gravitas not often seen in young adult fiction.
Quote:
“The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness…”
Also, this one from the Afterword, Le Guin explaining the limitations of the main character, which unfortunately led to criticism. Personally I loved the balance in this book and for just how progressive it was, with its critique of religion and its protagonists, one of whom was female and the other of whom was black:
“In such a world, I could put a girl at the heart of my story, but I couldn’t give her a man’s freedom, or chances equal to a man’s chances. She couldn’t be a hero in the hero-tale sense. Not even in a fantasy? No. Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality. After all, even in a democracy, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, after forty years of feminist striving, the reality is that we live in a top-down power structure that was shaped by, and is still dominated by, men. Back in 1969, that reality seemed almost unshakeable.” show less
What could have been a conventional coming-of-age tale in less skillful hands than Le Guin’s becomes a critique of cloistered, religious institutions that deny reality and don’t affirm life and joy, and I love the book for that. Much of the action takes place in subterranean tombs and an enormous labyrinth, all in show more darkness, which is telling. The young woman administers ancient rites with little meaning, and has no qualms about ceremonially executing enemies of the State who have been brought there. Her personal flaws and the flaws of the religious system she finds herself in are evident. There is real darkness here, and I don’t just mean the claustrophobic, blind environment Le Guin successfully creates. Just as in ‘A Wizard of Earthsea,’ the first book in the series, there are elements of identity and finding one’s self, but there is also profound disillusionment and loss of faith. It’s a mature, very intelligent work with a gravitas not often seen in young adult fiction.
Quote:
“The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness…”
Also, this one from the Afterword, Le Guin explaining the limitations of the main character, which unfortunately led to criticism. Personally I loved the balance in this book and for just how progressive it was, with its critique of religion and its protagonists, one of whom was female and the other of whom was black:
“In such a world, I could put a girl at the heart of my story, but I couldn’t give her a man’s freedom, or chances equal to a man’s chances. She couldn’t be a hero in the hero-tale sense. Not even in a fantasy? No. Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality. After all, even in a democracy, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, after forty years of feminist striving, the reality is that we live in a top-down power structure that was shaped by, and is still dominated by, men. Back in 1969, that reality seemed almost unshakeable.” show less
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ThingScore 75
Carol Reich (KLIATT Review, March 1995 (Vol. 29, No. 2))
Le Guin's 1970 fantasy for YAs (part two of the Earthsea Trilogy) has held up well over the decades and remains engaging. Narrative predominates throughout, but during the dialogue Inglis' voiced characters are never confusing to the listener. The three main female voices are acceptably done, the two main male voices are well done, the show more recording is clear, and Inglis is skilled enough to drop out of character for phrases such as "she said." Between the two of them, Le Guin and Inglis paint a vivid picture of the devious, threatening labyrinth that exists both underneath the temple and within the heart of the High Priestess whom the Wizard Ged rescues from service to the Nameless Ones. This book can stand alone. Category: Fiction Audiobooks. KLIATT Codes: JS*--Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 1994, Recorded Books, 4 tapes, 5.5 hrs. show less
Le Guin's 1970 fantasy for YAs (part two of the Earthsea Trilogy) has held up well over the decades and remains engaging. Narrative predominates throughout, but during the dialogue Inglis' voiced characters are never confusing to the listener. The three main female voices are acceptably done, the two main male voices are well done, the show more recording is clear, and Inglis is skilled enough to drop out of character for phrases such as "she said." Between the two of them, Le Guin and Inglis paint a vivid picture of the devious, threatening labyrinth that exists both underneath the temple and within the heart of the High Priestess whom the Wizard Ged rescues from service to the Nameless Ones. This book can stand alone. Category: Fiction Audiobooks. KLIATT Codes: JS*--Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 1994, Recorded Books, 4 tapes, 5.5 hrs. show less
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Author Information
489+ Works 166,790 Members
Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California on October 21, 1929. She received a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College in 1951 and a master's degree in romance literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance from Columbia University in 1952. She won a Fulbright fellowship in 1953 to study in Paris, where she met and married show more Charles Le Guin. Her first science-fiction novel, Rocannon's World, was published in 1966. Her other books included the Earthsea series, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, The Lathe of Heaven, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and The Telling. A Wizard of Earthsea received an American Library Association Notable Book citation, a Horn Book Honor List citation, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. She received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014. She also received the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. She also wrote books of poetry, short stories collections, collections of essays, children's books, a guide for writers, and volumes of translation including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by Gabriela Mistral. She died on January 22, 2018 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Tombs of Atuan
- Original title
- The Tombs of Atuan
- Original publication date
- 1970
- People/Characters
- Tenar (Arha, the One Priestess); Ged (Sparrowhawk); Penthe; Manan; Kossil (Priestess of the God-King); Thar (Priestess of the Twin Gods)
- Important places
- Atuan; Karego-At; Earthsea; Havnor
- Related movies
- Earthsea (2004 | IMDb)
- Epigraph*
- Solo nel silenzio la parola,
solo nella tenebra la luce,
solo nella morte è vita;
fulgido è il volo del falco
nel cielo deserto.
La creazione di Éa - Dedication
- For the redhead from Telluride
- First words
- "Come home, Tenar!" (prologue)
One high horn shrilled and ceased. - Quotations*
- Stáli tam plné významu, ktorý však ostával skrytý. (s. 21)
Plakala pre stratené roky strávené v područí bezcenného zla. Vzlykala od bolesti, pretože bola slobodná. (s. 133)
Začínala si uvedomovať, aká je sloboda ťažká. Zistila, že sloboda je ťažký náklad, veľké a zvláštne bremeno, ktoré na seba nakladá duch. Nie je to dar, ale voľba, a tá voľba môže byť veľmi ťažká. A... (show all)ko cesta, čo stúpa k svetlu, ale po ktorej k nemu pútnik s takým bremenom nemusí nikdy dôjsť. (s. 134) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Gravely she walked beside him up the white streets of Havnor, holding his hand, like a child coming home.
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.087661
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fantasy, Fiction and Literature, Teen
- DDC/MDS
- 813.087661 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Fantasy High fantasy
- LCC
- PZ7 .L5215 .T — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
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