The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Most things grow old and perish, as the centuries go on and on. Very few are the precious things that remain precious, or the tales that are still told.”

the girl lay looking up into the dark. All her life she had looked into the dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There was no roof. It went on out beyond the stars. No earthly Powers moved it. It had been before light, and would be after. It had been before life, and would be after. It went on beyond evil.

THE REASON PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE that I didn’t plan a trilogy from the start is that fantasy now suffers from endemic trilogitis (or the even more serious form of the disease, incurable seriesism). Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is largely responsible for this epidemic, since its six books were printed in three volumes, a trilogy.

The women warriors of current fantasy epics—ruthless swordswomen with no domestic or sexual responsibility who gallop about slaughtering baddies—to me they look less like women than like boys in women’s bodies in men’s armor.

Heroic fantasy descends to us from an archaic world. I hadn’t yet thought much about that archaism. My story took place in the old hierarchy of society, the pyramidal power structure, probably military in origin, in which orders are given from above, with a single figure at the top. This is the world of power over, in which women have always been ranked low.

fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality.

So, in my story, neither the woman nor the man can get free without the other. Not in that trap. Each has to ask for the other’s help and learn to trust and depend on the other. A large lesson, a new knowledge for both these strong, willful, lonely souls.