The Tombs of Atuan

Ooooh. Eheuuuu. Eheu.

How very sad. How very good. How very miserable our little girl protagonist is, mamma mia. I finish this book with such a heavy heart. I mean, no spoilers, but I shouldn't be this sad. Oh my goodness. That was good though. Recommend!

So this is the second in the Earthsea n-ology, Ursula Le Guin's (my master!) wonderful, deep, rich, intelligent response to YA-ish high fantasy. It follows several years after the events of A Wizard of Earthsea, AKA How Ged the Little Asshole Gets His Magickal Groove Back. This is about another little asshole: a young girl named Arha. Arha has been selected, Dalai Lama-style (Le Guin DEFINITELY INCORPORATES TIBET STUFF), as the reincarnated high priestess of the “Nameless Ones”, who seem to be unpleasant cave gods, basically. At five years old, she's swept up into a dark palace full of other priestesses and eunuchs, a palace that sits on top of the “Undertomb” (dark tomb cavern, important god-place) and “the Labyrinth” (dark labyrinth, treasures hidden, also god-place). Everything in this place is dark, run-down, and basically shitty.

And yea, verily, it is a shitty destiny Arha has fallen into. Though she doesn't realize it at first. DAMN, but she is a little shit in the beginning. Snide, mean-spirited, blindly devoted to the Nameless Ones and her authority; she bats away the quotidian kindnesses of her eunuch guardian, Manan, and her best friend, Penthe, and just basically acts like a brat. IRONICAL given she spends most of her young life churning butter and wearing a shitty black sack.

HENNYYWAAYYYY. The book starts slow - intentionally, I think - to mimic the oppressive boredom and petty shittiness of Arha's life in the palace. One day, she is shocked - SHOCKED - to discover (a) light in the Undertomb WTF this place is supposed to be holy pitch dark (!!) and (b) a MAN (!) WTF NO MEN ALLOWED HERE SO SACRILEGE and (c) trying to steal the Undertomb's magical booty! It's not a spoiler, I would guess, to say that this man is not just any dude but Ged himself! An older, wiser, chiller Ged, I am happy to report.

And from there churns the plot, which I won't spoil further.

So I basically worship at Le Guin's shrine, and I admired two - NAY, THREE - big qualities in this book. First, plot. Much like The Lathe of Heaven - or, honestly, any of her other books - she deftly reveals, layer by layer, a thick, juicy plotty momentum. The pacing and meditative style reflects SO WELL the mindset of Arha, as - slowly, slowly - the oppressive, shitty cobwebs of her brain are removed, revelation by revelation. You are VERY WITH HER on this journey, and it's so well done.

SECOND. High fantasy always seems to have a strong, naturalist quality. People are super in touch with their Middle-Earth-sea natural world. Forest elves, etc. What I like about the Earthsea books, and Le Guin does it a lot in this book as well, is how richly meditative the descriptions are. You feel and taste the dank tunnels, the roaring mountain stream, the salty and vast sea. It's very tactile. I normally find place descriptions boring, something that slows me down. But here, I let myself be slowed down, and I liked it. The world engages you on all senses.

AND THIRD. I actually didn't get this until I read Le Guin's afterword, for I am a simple person, but she was apparently making some big points about Growing Up Female in a patriarchal, hierarchical society, which now, upon reflection, I'm like oooooh. Duh! So that heavy weight on my heart and Arha's heart was, ahem, THE WEIGHT OF THE PATRIARCHY. V good.

Still much much better than Harry Potter and LOTR, and like x10000000 times better than godawful godstupid unholy godking George RR Martin's stuff DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED.