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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8158614" data-attributes="member: 42582">Where are these assumptions stated? Where have they been laid down?I am familiar with the works of three classic fantasy authors: JRRT (LotR and The Hobbit); REH (his Conan and Kull stories); and LeGuin (the Earthsea trilogy). JRRT's work is replete with secret ways - they are a major plot point in The Hobbit and figure in LotR both in the Moria sequence and the Cirith Ungol sequence (which are the only sequences where way-blocking walls figure in the story). Conan frequently encounters secret ways through blocking walls. (I haven't gone back through all the stories - at the moment I'm thinking of the one in Shadows of Zamboula.) The only blocking walls I recall in the Earthsea stories are in the Tombs of Atuan, where there are secret ways which Ged discovers with the help of Tenar.It seems to me that, if a wall is worth caring about at all, the prospect of a secret way through it does not challenge any assumptions I would make.Yet in this very same post you are objecting to A.</blockquote>