The Tombs of Atuan is the second book in Ursula K. Le Guin’s unmissable Earthsea series. Artist David Lupton provides the illustrations and a haunting binding design for this new Folio edition.
Tehanu
Book 4 of the Books of Earthsea
Illustrated by David Lupton
Afterword by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Folio Society’s edition of Tehanu, the fourth story in the series, continues the work of bringing Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea to life. With enchanting illustrations by David Lupton.
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‘This was a magic of words, a magic of true speaking.’
- Neil Gaiman
Celebrated across the world for its adventure, its wisdom and its unforgettable characters, the Earthsea series has inspired readers and writers since the release of A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968. The fourth volume, Tehanu, sees legendary writer Ursula K. Le Guin introduce new heroes and new threats, while Ged faces perhaps the hardest challenge of his life. Series artist David Lupton worked with Le Guin at the outset of the series to create a Ged and an Earthsea that stayed true to the author’s vision. This beautiful collector’s edition features seven spellbinding colour images and a perceptive afterword by Le Guin herself, revealing her own thoughts on this remarkable chapter in the Earthsea series. The endpapers are printed with maps and the exquisite binding features a stirring illustration of Tenar and the dragon Kalessin, the eerie vapour of Kalessin’s flames blocked in shimmering silver foil.
See the Folio Le Guin collection here.
Bound in printed and blocked cloth
Set in Garamond with Ducinea Serif as display
256 pages
6 full-page and one double-page colour illustration
Printed map endpapers
Plain slipcase
9˝ x 5¾˝
It has been more than 20 years since Ged and Tenar led each other out of the Undertomb. Freed from the dark gods of death and nothingness, Tenar has lived a life full of everything that was denied to her in her youth. Now, widowed and alone, she finds herself caring for another lost soul: the child Therru, burned and discarded by those who should have protected her. Therru hungers for tales of those other creatures of fire: dragons! But when Ged the Dragonlord returns he is a changed man, hollowed out by his experiences across the sea, and he seems to set them on a darker, stranger path. Roke is seeking a new Archmage, and there are those who will kill to wield such power…
‘She had been told that men must not look into a dragon’s eyes, but that was nothing to her.’
Le Guin’s fourth Earthsea tale teems with the gorgeous magic of her fantasy masterpiece but it is also perhaps the most complex of the series thus far. It asks what a woman’s power is in a world where only men are expected to wield respectable magic. Tenar, the forthright heroine of The Tombs of Atuan, keeps untapped reservoirs of power within her, while the child Therru, so battered by the world of men, almost seems to hold the key to an entirely new form of magic. Lupton’s expressive images, rich with emotion and foreboding, reveal the bonds between Tenar and her adopted child, and bring an added wildness to this darker portion of the Earthsea legend.