Ursula K. Le Guin's Tombs of Atuan: A classic fantasy masterpiece that gives you everything you want and then some

What’s the plot?

In an isolated temple in the mountainous deserts of Atuan, young Tenar is raised to be the priestess of the nameless gods, and guards the underground labyrinth of their ancient tombs. But when a thief appears with forbidden magic to seek the labyrinth's greatest treasure, Tenar begins to question everything she’s ever known ...

Where’s it from?

This was first published in the US in 1970 - it’s the unplanned semi-sequel to A Wizard of Earthsea which came out a few years earlier.

Three words: Thrilling, immersive, timeless.

Re-readable? Oh yes.

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One of my controversial book opinions is that it’s fine (and sometimes better) to read a series out of order, and Earthsea is a fine example.

My mum gave me a copy of the full Earthsea Quartet when I was a teenager - an intimidatingly dense volume of small, close-set text, with generic silhouettes of men and dragons on the cover. I knew that this was supposed to be one of the best fantasy series of all time; I was semi-familiar with the story thanks to the forgettable Studio Ghibli adaptation; I used to have far lower standards for books and would read anything I could get my hands on. Still, no matter how many times I opened up the volume over the years, I could never get past the first five pages. A Wizard of Earthsea, it seemed, was not for me.

But I’ve always been a fan of reading things out of order (a trait probably instilled from a childhood of reading whatever random books happened to be available at the library). I think of spoilers more as DIY flash-forwards, an extra sprinkle of foreshadowing - it’s interesting to bounce around a series hearing hints of earlier books, getting the gist of what happens without knowing exactly how things unfold. You don’t miss much, especially if the story’s well written - and then if you really want you can go back to the beginning and experience it like a prequel. 

All this to say: for some reason I had the notion to try going back to Earthsea - but this time, I’d skip straight to the spooky-sounding second book, The Tombs of Atuan. 

And I loved it.

I think a lot of contemporary stories are very aware of their genre, embracing or subverting tropes in a way that relies on the audience already having a good knowledge of what to expect. But The Tombs of Atuan is totally different from modern fantasy.

 

The first thing that struck me was how ancient the story felt. It's like something straight out of One Thousand and One Nights - a tale full of truth as well as magic.

Aside from a bit of wizardry later on, the majority of the book could almost be realist fiction. Tenar’s upbringing is told through a well-paced montage of rituals and chores, lentils and porridge, fishing and weaving - things that have been part of people’s daily lives all through history. It’s a very grounded world, which makes Tenar’s strange life as a chosen priestess all the more believable - and tragic, knowing that similar things have probably happened in real life.

The Tombs of Atuan is a cool example of the ever-appealing ‘double fantasy’, where you simultaneously wish that you could live in the characters’ world while being relieved that you don’t have to go through what they suffer. 

Who wouldn’t want to be destined from birth to be high priestess of nameless powers, untouchable and fearless, spending your days unearthing forgotten secrets in a place no-one else can enter? And yet how terrible, to be cut off from all others, to forever serve an empty throne, to be nameless yourself and be mistress of nothing but the dark and the dead. 

The book paints these opposites wonderfully - we feel Tenar’s boredom and loneliness as the days and years of her life pass by without change, and feel torn by guilt when she exercises her priestly duty of choosing how three prisoners are to die, an especially chilling scene. But Tenar’s life isn't completely dark. It’s lit up by apples shared with a friend, legends around a fire on a stormy night, sunset over distant mountains, games played in a courtyard. Tenar is just as keen as we are to see the labyrinth, and once it’s introduced as a setting we spend most of the rest of the book exploring it.

Even the tombs themselves are a source of excitement - but at the same time these moments of curiosity and awe are shadowed by despair. Tenar puts off going to the room of the greatest treasures, because - not that she admits it to herself - how could she live then, with nothing left to look forward to? What’s the point of being mistress when your domain is buried underground, and the only place you can be independent is alone? Le Guin poses these questions subtly, never outright, but always bubbling beneath the surface.

In a way I’m glad I didn’t read this when I was younger - I would have liked it, for sure, but I wouldn’t have appreciated it on the same level I do now. If I was still in high school or uni, I’d be spoiled for choice for essay material. You could connect the dark, unseen labyrinth to the twisting depths of the psyche, or ponder what its eventual downfall might have to say about feminine rage. You could, as Le Guin does herself in the book’s afterword, think about how Tenar has power over others but no power over her own life. You could interpret their belief that she’s the reincarnation of the original priestess as representing how women’s lives have been stifled over untold generations in ways that echo into the present. It’s no surprise that the book’s sparked extensive debates about how/whether it’s feminist ever since it was published.

I’ve never wanted to annotate a book until now - you could analyse not only every chapter but every passage, it's so richly layered and thought provoking. 

And, of course, you can enjoy it as a brilliantly-written fantasy - in terms of pure adventure, it’s right up there with The Princess Bride. I went into The Tombs of Atuan with cautiously low expectations, but boy did it deliver on its promises. A bottomless pit is fallen into; treasure chests are opened; dark caves are illuminated and ancient gods awoken. Every Chekhov’s gun is fired, everything you wonder about gets cleverly revealed and neatly wrapped up.  It's probably a good thing I watched the adaptation before reading the book, otherwise I would have been so disappointed by how underwhelming the movie was, especially when the tombs are so reminiscent of the mine tunnels and abandoned castle in Ghibli's Laputa.

After giving up on a pile of disappointing books earlier this year, I was pleased to finally find a story that had my two book must-haves: characters that you care about, and a talented writer who can skilfully guide you through the story. Tenar is a compelling protagonist, and a main appeal of the book is watching her grow. Her dynamic with the mysterious thief - Ged of the first book, now grown up - is also great, and I loved how they slowly came to trust each other. Ged may be a wizard, but in Tenar’s domain he’s at her mercy, and they both have to rely on each other if they’re ever to escape the tombs. The stakes are high - death, and things even worse than death.

Characters we care about? Check! And a talented writer? You bet. Right on the first page when Le Guin describes Tenar as a toddler “running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass” I could picture it exactly, and knew I was in good hands. The Tombs of Atuan is full of excellent metaphors, similes, and evocative descriptions, which never feel out of place. The sentences flow naturally, and every action has consequences that drive the plot and amp up the tension. Unlike the weirdly detached narration of the first book, we’re right there with Tenar, and the simple language makes the emotions super punchy. Like Antonia Forest, Le Guin has a knack for efficient dialogue too, and doesn’t weigh down her writing with any unnecessary words.

 

The world of Atuan is built up effortlessly, from its customs and gods to its politics and history. My only niggle with this book is that the early mentions of directions made me pause for a bit to suss out the geography in my head (the edition from my mum even has a map of the labyrinth in it, which is pretty funny considering it's supposed to be an impenetrable place of darkness that no-one but Tenar can navigate).

I love how Le Guin withholds certain bits of information, one of my favourite writing techniques. A lot of the time things are left unsaid, for us to read between the lines - like how Tenar must feel when she enters the tombs for the first time and is forced to crawl like a dog to the skirts of the elder priestess to find her way out. Other times, bigger things are unseen. We only see Ged from Tenar’s point of view, for example - what goes through his head when he’s trapped in the labyrinth for days on end? How does he weave his spells to keep the nameless gods at bay? Where does he go when he does his astral projecting thing at the end of the book? And what exactly is squirrelled away in the attics and basements and alcoves of the tombs? It’s all left to our imagination, and that’s where the real magic of storytelling lies.

“She watched him, and never could she have said what was in her heart as she watched him, in the firelight, in the mountain dusk ...” 

I was also impressed by the way the book deals with what happens after ‘the end’. Tenar's decision to free Ged - and herself - isn't easy, and she struggles with that choice even after it's made. As I saw noted in another review, a lesser book would conclude after the story’s climax, but Le Guin keeps us with the characters for a few chapters more as Tenar faces the new challenge of how she is to live her life in the world beyond the tombs, which makes the ultimate ending feel much more earned. And despite my insistence on reading the last page of books first, I was still so moved by the last sentence - which perfectly mirrors the opening line of the book - that I actually cried ... and immediately went online to buy my own copy.

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I sometimes wonder what works of art people must be creating right now that I'll one day be obsessed with, and sometimes that obsession turns out to be a book that was written long before I was born.

It’s always fascinating to read a book that's the ‘grandparent’ of a genre - you get to uncover the original things that dozens of later creators were inspired by. I had no idea that the ‘true names have power’ trope came from the Earthsea books. I’ve seen it so often, from Spirited Away to the Deverry cycle, that I always thought it was something from myth and superstition - which I’m sure it was to begin with - but it turns out it was Ursula Le Guin who popularised the power of names for a whole generation of writers. You can also really see her influence on Neil Gaiman, in those old-style sentences like “Full of gold, and the swords of old heroes ... and bones, and years, and silence.”

I really like that Ged is described as dark-skinned, and I agree with other people's criticism of publishers for hardly ever depicting him like that in cover art. It’s great that this masterpiece of fantasy has a dark-skinned hero, but awful that you’d never know that unless you read the books. Funnily enough, I imagined all the characters as vaguely South American or Middle Eastern because of the landscape of deserts and temples - only to later find out that Tenar is meant to be white, and that her people are apparently the pale minority of Earthsea.

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On one hand, I’m tempted to read the rest of the series - it’s cool how each one is set years, if not decades, apart, and I want to see more of Ged and Tenar. On the other hand, I know that the six Earthsea books have a reputation for being quite different from one another - when I checked out an online discussion to see what one I should look to next, every single commenter had ranked the books differently. Besides, I kind of prefer Ged as a side character, with his heroic deeds an intriguing backstory rather than a central plot.

And I guess I’m worried that perhaps none of the other books can quite live up to The Tombs of Atuan ...

This the rare kind of book that keeps you up at night, a book you carry with you just for company, a book you get reminded of when listening to song lyrics. This is fantasy - and storytelling - at its very best.