tombs of atuan – Cannonball Read 17

Better on a Re-Read

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin

May 11, 2019 by Jake Leave a Comment

A year ago, I binge read the first three books in the Earthsea Cycle. A Wizard of Earthsea came in a three-way tie for my favorite read of 2018. Tombs of Atuan was my least favorite of the three. I felt like it was too fascinated with the labyrinthian tombs and the ending took too much of the lead character’s agency that she had built. Anyway, I decided to go back to the Cycle and read Tehanu, which is book four. When I discovered it would include the lead from […]

“You are like a lantern swathed and covered, hidden away in a dark place. Yet the light shines; they could not put out the light.”

February 16, 2014 by alannaofdoom 2 Comments

Decades before The Wire‘s second season premiere made viewers yell, “Who are these people? Why are we at the port? Where is McNulty?” Ursula K. Le Guin begins her sequel to A Wizard of Earthsea by introducing us to Tenar of Atuan. Who? Where? It’s a powerful sense of dislocation. We’re in the Kargad Lands, the realm of pale barbarians referenced, but not explored, in Wizard. As the reincarnated First Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, Tenar is taken from her family at the age […]

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