Tombs of Atuan

The wonders of Earthsea continue with Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan. The second book in the loose series features another protagonist, another coming-of-age of sorts. This time the protagonist is a teenage girl, Tenar, the reincarnated focus of a religion that (to pick up on outside clues) is confined to a small part of Earthsea, and diminishing.  Tenar is in many ways the opposite of young Ged: she is accustomed to solitude, and not asking too many questions or receiving too many answers. She does not receive training or much guidance. She has no great dreams of adventure or power, content to be more inward-looking; but she fully explores her domain (a remote religious installation in the desert) and masters it. Like Ged, she must give up childish ideas to become adult, and like Ged, her choices have far-reaching consequences which she must learn to accept and weave into her own character in order to be a whole, complete person.

Just like the previous one, this book was a short, quick, satisfying read. As you, dear reader, may perhaps have realized, I am usually reading several books at once, and this means that my brain draws strange connections between them. This book was wonderful in contrast with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (blog post forthcoming), which robbed its sole featured female character of any agency. Here, women are abundant, and interact with each other as people. The book passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, surpassing that minimum requirement and going on to make female characters important, to make their choices matter, to make important plot points and even the continuation of the book, or the universe. Also, to make this not a big deal.

Our previous protagonist, Ged, does make an appearance. He shows up partway through the book, and serves as a nice connection to the rest of Earthsea outside the parched abbey's walls and closed mindset. This is nice, but Ged doesn't take center stage, and although we readers know the outcome of the book from quite early (it is listed in Ged's long list of mythic accomplishments, at the end of the previous book), it is nice to see the detail that surrounds the one-sentence Summary of Legend. And this does not detract from Tenar's centrality or importance. Ged himself bows to her decisions, puts his life in her hands, and listens carefully when she decides, and often changes her mind, about what she wants to do.


This post's theme word is darkle, "to make or become dark." The darkling cave quenched all light, crushed all hope, and was decorated with many pretty pictures (which unfortunately no one would ever see again).

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea is a dollop of fantasy delight, a neat little story with tendrils sneaking out into a broader magical world, but all packaged up as a coming-of-age, coming-into-powers tale. I did not accurately remember its length --- in my mind it has the fleshed-out detail of a full novel, but it clocks in at only ~150 pages in my true-numbered ecopy. It took only two days of commuting-reading to finish, and my Magical Reading Tricorder of the Future informs me I spent less than 4 hours inhaling the book.

It's nice. It's calming. The narrator's voice sounds like a camp counselor over a fire, a voice that will comfort and lull you into sleep. The story is built around simple archetypes, foundational storytelling pillars laid firmly against bedrock. It feels dependable, and indeed, it can be relied-on to feature the nice elements of a Le Guin story. True friendships, good food, daily tasks described with love and care. A certain simple poetry in phrasings and structure. (In a moment of despair, one character muses that "at least his [own] death would put an end to the evil he had loosed by living." pg. 105) No sense of embellishment, or the science-like tricky details typical in the magical workings of, e.g., Brandon Sanderson.

A few details, roughly sketched, give a sense of the mystery and power of magic. I liked in particular that, akin to the logic of computer programming, scope must be specified and clear:

A mage can control only what is near him, what he can name exactly and wholly. (pg. 41)

I liked that, although great puissance and achievements are foretold for the protagonist Ged, he is not an overpowered, unreasonably-lucky, unkillable master. He makes mistakes, a lot of them, and he doesn't instantly recover or learn his lesson. He earns scars, not always wisely or bravely, and they are ugly, not magical or handsome. His growing power and wisdom are accompanied by a proportionate loss of ego and desire to use the power.

A lovely book. Recommended.


This post's theme word is gascon, "a braggart" or "boastful." Ged gradually matures from a gascon to a proper adult, humble at the prospect of everything he knows he does not know.