The Tombs of Atuan is another tale of Sparrowhawk, the wizard in A Wizard of Earthsea. Sparrowhawk doesn’t appear until late in the story, however, since it is really about Arha, priestess of the Nameless Ones. She becomes Arha, the Eaten One, at a very young age when she is dedicated to the Nameless Ones, and knows no other life but her ritual existence in the Place of the Tombs of Atuan.
The dark underground Tombs and Labyrinth with which Arha becomes so familiar as she grows up are a fascinating place. The reader sees very little inside them, since light is forbidden by the Nameless Ones, but Arha learns to navigate them with by touch and with her well-trained memory of the correct turnings. I found myself truly amazed by the detail LeGuin managed to convey about a place that is almost entirely governed by darkness.
The Tombs hold a treasure, important to the outside world and jealously guarded by the Nameless Ones, and that is where Sparrowhawk enters the story. He and Arha, who serves the Nameless Ones unconditionally, are working at cross-purposes, of course, but he’s a pretty special guy, and Arha finds herself disinclined to do away with him as she should. She faces important decisions about who she is and who she would choose to be, decisions with more riding on them than just Sparrowhawk’s life.
This story is short but still manages to be large in scope, detail and feeling. Most of it takes place in the Place of the Tombs, but the details of the underground labyrinth, the themes of power and the nature of who one really is, and the connections to the fate of the rest of Earthsea (including connections to something small in A Wizard of Earthsea that turns out to be important) make it seem to take up more space. It also gracefully carries on themes and stories from the first volume of the trilogy and doesn’t fall short the way sequels too often do.
The Tombs of Atuan is a beautiful story with rich, evocative descriptions that are somehow still concise, though neither crammed-in nor truncated. I not only feel like it was so much longer than it is, but also that it was so much more real than it is. LeGuin manages to take me into her created places and make me believe in them and the characters that inhabit them even if just for a little while.
You might also like: A Wizard of Earthsea
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