The Tombs of Atuan

In a genre dominated by 800+ page tomes, this book was a refreshing and delightful read. Ursula Le Guin is a master of flowing, lyrical prose. The book is relatively brief, but chock full of all the elements that are required for a great fantasy story. She accomplishes this feat by keeping things simple and uncluttered. She doesn't need an appendix to list all the characters and their relation to one another. Her world is well-realized, her characters well-fleshed out, and the story captures you from the first pages. Take a break from the massive tales of Jordan and Martin et al. (not that there's anything wrong with them) and read an author whose writing is as magical as her story.

I found sections a bit boring but overall it was solid. I finished it which means it was good enough.

Nice paperback. Easy to read.

Reading this book again as an adult simply proves the magnificence of Le Guin's writing. Thanks for the child I was and the woman I am!

Currently reading all the series that are linked to the Legends anthologies (with the exceptions of Stephen King and Anne McCaffrey, as I'm in the process of reading all of their works [and I've already read all of the Dragonrider stories written so far... Todd, I'd LOVE to see a continuation of the sort of cliffhanger Anne left with her last solo novel]).This one was harder than the first to get through. As she wrote in the afterward (written 40 years or so after the book was originally published), the book was one of the first solo focus books written strictly from a female point of view, and it was written REALISTICALLY, to boot, acknowledging the patriarchal and misogynistic worlds the heroine and the writer both exist in. As a writer, you're advised to write what you know, and the book definitely fits that mold: it's a bleak and disheartening look at a girl that, while ostensibly having autonomous power, is ultimately constrained by the reality she's come to recognize... she genuinely has no REAL power. Yes, she has "absolute" power in her one fiefdom, but outside of that little word, bo one else recognizes it as power. With the help of a protagonist from the first book in the series, she slowly comes to this realization on her own, and learns to trust to help them BOTH become free (her for the first time in her young life).Even though it WAS a difficult slog, it has opened my eyes a little bit more to the difficulties women face in just trying to live their own lives, let alone improve themselves. The way things are going, it's looking like the props women have been getting recently are being completely undermined by our society, and that's not good... for ANYone.