Editorial Review
WHEN YOUNG TENAR is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away -- home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.
With millions of copies sold, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere. Complex, innovative, and deeply moral, this quintessential fantasy sequence has been compared with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and has helped make Le Guin one of the most distinguished fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
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Customer Reviews
on audio 
2008-07-02
The Tombs of Atuan is very different from A Wizard of Earthsea. It focuses on a young woman who has spent her life cloistered in the tombs of gods who she serves but doesn't know. Just as the reader feels completely miserable at the state of this disillusioned young lady, Ged (who nobody would describe as particularly cheerful or up-beat), arrives and brings with him a much-needed ray of sunshine, even though he spends most of the book under the earth. After Ged's arrival, things start to slowly make more sense to Tenar and it is interesting to watch her well-developed character gradually move from darkness to light.
This is a slow-paced book. There's not a lot of action until the end, but Ged's quest in the tombs is related to the rest of the Earthsea series, so it's valuable in that sense. And, of course, an Ursula Le Guin is always a pleasure to read and this audiobook version is very good. --FantasyLiterature.net
the tombs of Atuan 
2008-06-02
This is the second book of the earthsea cycle. The main character is not Ged the mage, but Tenar the first priestess of an old cult. It's an uncomplicated story about human feelings (particularly the coming of age of the main character, the crucial choosing of one's future and trust). The magic is present all through it without any extraordinary manifestations, such believable is Le Guin's wizardry. It's an easy reading that can be easily accomplished in a full day.
This edition is a sturdy one and will resist well the hazards a book is exposed to, but the paper lacks whiteness and is of a harsh type.
The Id 2008-05-16
It's rare, but sometimes a novel will move me deeply. Neil Gaiman's London Underground spoke to me. Some of Paul Park's early works touched me. The Tombs of Atuan was a story that resonated with my life, and was powerful to me because of that.
This, of course, is a book about tombs. We follow the heroine, a girl who has been eaten, whose un-name means, "The Eaten One." Her life was taken from her at an early age, and she is now queen of a cult of meaningless worship, mistress of airless passages, serving gods that unexist as nameless shadows. Her court is a useless appendage to a king who long since consolidated his power and disconnected her court. She has no real memories or life experiences, but she does walk around in dark tombs, looking for treasure or some elusive meaning there.
The book is powerful because it shows the id of a young girl, glowing like a bright star among the depression and death all around her, that were given to her as her social role and her name. It inverts the Western concept of the id, of the individual's deepest desires, as evil, and of society's rule taming and civilizing the individual through the conscious ego. It's inspiring to see a book where a girl can choose to be good, given this situation, due not to any role model, but due to her true nature. And yet, the characters are morally ambiguous, like nature, like real actual people. The heroine does some awful things. The hero of the previous book -- Ged -- arrives as a thief in the night.
In many ways this is a book about the girl who was Arha, the Eaten One, and a study of her character. It isn't a great novel in the sense of portraying character alone, but it is great in how it pulls in elements of muted horror, in the symmetries between Arha, the tombs, her life, and the unspoken depression these evoke, in Le Guin's amazing abilities in pacing, of lending an epic feel, of evoking the whole story like it were a shadow cast on a wall, of indirectly pulling in Jungian archetypes left and right. The whole book has this powerful, visceral urgency to it. But I think what really made this book for me is that Arha's id shines, amidst darkness.
Not Free SF Reader 
2007-09-03
The sequel to A Wizard of Earthsea is a little disappointing after the first book, and changes fairly significantly.
It shifts focus from the mature wizard Ged, to a young woman. She is a member of a matriarchal cult, and they end up trapping and imprisoning Ged after he comes there on a mission.
She has to come to realise what is more important.
It's the ways this is different that make it special 2007-01-25
This is wonderful novel, but it's not for everyone. A reviewer below mentioned this being a "swords and sorcery" novel. That's dead wrong, though. There's not a sword to be found in it, really. There is magic, of course, but it manifests itself in a very different way and at a very different tempo than true "swords and sorcery" novels.
What I love about this are the very things that some readers - often male readers, I'd wager - don't quite like about it. I like the very many ways it's DIFFERENT than anything else I've read in fantasy. Honestly, for the first half of there's no high adventure at all. It's the slow story a young girl indoctrinated into a dark and foreboding religion. Yes, a young GIRL. The main character of this novel knows no magic, doesn't own a sword, isn't out to change the world. That's refreshingly different than most fantasy.
Add to that that the hero figure, Ged, doesn't even enter the novel until well into it. And add to that that when he's introduced he's largely powerless and at the mercy of the young woman, Tenar. How their relationship develops and how it becomes a quest novel drives the later half of the book, but still LeGuin never takes us too far from Tenar and the fact that everything she's experiencing is completely changing the world as she knew it.
For those reasons - and more - this is a wonderful novel. If any of this sounds interesting to you please buy this and read it. Or read it again if - like me - you're an adult that first read Earthsea stuff years ago. It holds up wonderfully and it has plenty to appeal to adults as well as to younger readers.
I'm a fan, and before long I'll pick up the next one and journey back to Earthsea again.
"I Know Where the Great Treasure Is..." 2006-11-23
WHEN YOUNG TENAR is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away -- home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.
With millions of copies sold, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere. Complex, innovative, and deeply moral, this quintessential fantasy sequence has been compared with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and has helped make Le Guin one of the most distinguished fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
"May the Black Ones take your soul, Kossil!" 2006-10-13
While not as detailed or as ornate as THE LORD OF THE RINGS, LeGuin's Earthsea Cycle is considered among the finest of the Sword and Sorcery classics. THE TOMBS OF ATUAN is the second book in the Cycle.
In THE TOMBS OF ATUAN, Ged, now in his young manhood, is once again on a quest, seeking to restore the Rune of Peace. He comes to bleak and desolate Atuan, one of the Kargad Lands, and into the lair of the Black Ones, malevolent Old Powers of Earth, worshipped now by a cult headed by Arha, "The Eaten One."
Trapped in an underground maze, he is at first mocked by Arha, a young girl named Tenar, recently elevated to the priestesshood; however, as Tenar/Arha begins to know him she becomes enthralled with his tales of the outside world. In the end, she aids him in evading the Black Ones, escaping from the vindictive senior priestess, recovering the Rune of Peace, and returning to his own country.
THE TOMBS OF ATUAN is a book in which atmosphere is everything. The oppressiveness of Arha's life, the isolation of Atuan, and the enveloping pall of evil and decay in that land pervade this book, making it somewhat difficult to "get into." The story is sad and drear, only relieved at the very end by the success of Ged's quest and the liberation of Tenar.
Not too bad..... 2006-02-23
The second book in the earthsea cycle is about a girl who is born a high priestess(or actually, a reincarnation of one). Her true name is Tenar, but was called Arha, the "eaten one." She is a priestess for the godkings and is the one who goes through the labrinyth of Atuan. The labrinyth is completely dark, and has to be memorized by touch and sense of direction since there is no light. I think there are holes in one part of the labrinyth(or the tombs, I can't remember which), where you can look down into them and light will pass through. No one was ever allowed into the undertomb of the labrinyth. Turns out Ged is the one seeking the ring of Erreth-Akbe. I could go farther but don't want to ruin the story. The story was okay, in terms of the way it's written. Half the time, the book bore me because it didn't really have a clear story plot. Still recommended though.
Bit of letdown 2005-09-19
The best part of the second book in the Earthsea series is the first book... This story, thankfully very short, is a letdown. The writing is excellent but the storyline centers on a very weak and uninteresting character. I would imagine only people really interested in the series should bother reading it, all others should skip it.
A Book That Should Haunt Any Thinking Reader 2005-08-23
Innocence and darkness are mixed so beautifully here that it is truly a haunting story. A 'dalai-lamaistic' faith system as ancient and timeless as the world in which it dwells is the under-pinning premise here - Tenar is the re-incarnated High Priestess of the Tombs with a thousand previous lives. She is taken from her parents as a mere child, loses her name and any real identity and becomes utterly sunken in this dark dry spiritual world. She believes. She becomes. The reader remembers who she really was but she doesn't and the reader is cut to the heart. Le Guin paints something really vivid here and all the more so because her young heroine stumbles literally in complete darkness. She shows you how a life can be swallowed up in absolute ignorance and how tragic that is. When Ged arrives and leads her out of darkness, Tenar is given back her name but realizes that she is left with nothing else. Everything she was taught was a lie. This is how the book ends. It is no wonder that Le Guin wrote a 'follow-up' devoted to Tenar (Tehanu) because I think she felt she owed it to Tenar and to the readers. A real gem of a story.
