Spring 2019, Wild Readers 5 discussion

The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula LeGuin, is not normally my genre; I avoid fantasy because I dislike what little I’ve read of it. But this book opened the door for me because I came to care so much about the protagonist, Tenar, and her growth as a character. She gets taken from her own family at the age of about 4 or 5 to be the priestess of a group called the “Nameless Ones,” and when she’s taken, she doesn’t know much about them, or about the world in general, in an objective way. Apparently the Nameless Ones are evil (hard to tell in some ways--and I liked very much this ambiguity). They are entirely women, and they live above a gigantic maze of tunnels and a labyrinth where no light is allowed. So as Tenar grows up, she learns to navigate the tunnels and the labyritnth in the pitch black. The whole setting is really well-done. The writing style annoyed me at first--really thick description--and then I came to understand that the setting was key to understanding the characters, which is what we all care the most about anyway. I’m looking forward to tackling at least the first book in the six-book series next. I think writers are the people who really might have the most to learn from LeGuin, because her style is unique, and after awhile, I learned from it. And I learned more about fantasy as a genre, too.