PG16- The Left Hand of Darkness (some v,some x,b), Tehanu (some v,some x,b), Orisinian Tales (some v,b), The Dispossessed (some x,some v,b), The Word for World is Forest (v), Four Ways to Forgiveness (x,v), The Lathe of Heaven (v,b), Buffalo Gals (some x,some v), Searoad (slight v,b)
PG13- The Tombs of Atuan (some v,b), The Farthest Shore (b), The Compass Rose (slight v,b), The Eye of the Heron (v), The Wind's Twelve Quarters (some v)
PG- A Wizard of Earthsea (some b)
Le Guin is one of the few old masters who is a woman. She specializes in almost poetic epics about people caught in situations that bring out something new in themselves they never would otherwise have discovered. This new thing can almost never be expressed in fewer than 100 words. Le Guin also likes to play with culture shock, and with the interface between people from different backgrounds. Essentially, however, she is an optimist, the flip side of Octavia Butler's coin.
However, many Le Guin novels are difficult for the average reader, partly because they strongly integrate psychology with philosophy. They demand that you give something in return, even if it's only an emotional or mental investment. If you get through a good Le Guin book without thinking, I'll be amazed. Even people who hate her seem to hate her for her complexity, and with a passion that somewhat compliments her skill in eliciting emotion. Like Butler, Le Guin is not always comfortable to read, but she is invariably honest in her observations of humankind.
The Left Hand of Darkness begins as a human ambassador named Genly Ai comes alone to the icy planet Gethen, also called Winter. The inhabitants of Gethen are unique in the universe in that they are hermaphroditic: neither male nor female, but able to take on the characteristics of either during the phase of kemmer. Genly's efforts to bring the planet into contact with the wider universe hinge on the connection between himself and a single Gethenian, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. As the novel follows their journey, Le Guin explores the potential depths of what such human connections might become, if unobscured by gender. This Hugo and Nebula winner is one of Le Guin's masterworks, a beautiful, poignant, and thoughtful story, the sort of book which can shake you to the core if you open yourself to it.
A traitorous patriot. A naive genius. A self-exiled ambassador. The truth is in the eye of the beholder. Le Guin's other Hugo-Nebula double winner is The Dispossessed, a book which Kristin describes as "more cerebral" than The Left Hand of Darkness. I agree, and I think much of that stems from the main character, who is a scientist making first contact with the race from whom his people split two hundred years before. Shevek is the brilliant inventor of the ansible, a device that can communicate across vast regions of space instantaneously. He is also a resident of Anarres, the first planet-wide experiment in Democratic Socialist Anarchy. Shevek wants to give true freedom to his people- the freedom to contact outsiders, even to leave Anarres. But he cannot do that until he takes freedom for himself and decides if the cure is worse than the disease.
New Tahiti is an unspoiled wilderness, but that won't last for long if Captain Davidson has his way. He can tame it and turn it into a human world, because men have always been stronger than the land around them. In the language of the native Athsheans, The Word for World is Forest. But the forest is being destroyed, their people are being killed and enslaved, and the world is changing. Sometimes, what one has to do is not the right thing, and the new god that has come among the people of the forest is not a gentle god; his dreams are full of death. A shocking allegory for the invasion and colonization of five continents on our own world, this book is powerfully written but somewhat violent and disturbing. This is not a comfortable book, and many of the characters are frightening to understand, but I loved it anyway.
A very different exploration of the end of slavery is Four Ways to Forgiveness. LeGuin is careful not to dehumanize anyone in these four novellas, which are almost another take on the Cetian question explored in The Dispossessed, but here she talks about the actual end of slavery and the people who still carry the memories inside of them. Forgiveness for both master and slave is the hope; the result is a kind of seperate peace, or as one character calls it, "holding to the one true thing". Beatifully lyrical and poignantly real, this was one of the better LeGuin novels, perhaps because she is not forced to extend the plots beyond their natural boundaries. Each novella is complete within itself but has ties to the others, mostly through places and events, or theme. All of the stories take place on two planets in the same system. One has a history of slavery, and it sent slaves to conquer the other planet. But those slaves revolted, and the two planets fought a terrible war. Now, the second planet is free and slaves flock to it from the homeworld. But though slavery is slowly disappearing, it still exists in some forms, and racism is still the norm. The pale-skinned slaves must try to look at themselves as human beings before their former masters will ever see them as such. Most of the novellas have at least part of a romance, but they are primarily about personal journeys.
Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy is well known as a classic of 'young adult' literature, and the original three books certainly hold appeal for readers of many ages. The archipelago world of Earthsea, with its hundreds of islands and as many cultures residing on them, must rank among the most exquisite and original fantasy realms ever created. The first volume, A Wizard of Earthsea, tells the coming-of-age story of Ged, called Sparrowhawk, as he goes from clueless country goatherd to master sorcerer, with heavy doses of adolescent trauma along the way. With him we learn the secrets of Earthsea wizardry, which is dependent on knowing the true names of things, and thus their true identities.
While the trilogy as a whole is not exactly lighthearted, The Tombs of Atuan is without contest the darkest of the three. It introduces us to Tenar, a young priestess of the Tombs, whose life is bound to the murky, ancient powers she serves. A young wizard on a quest interrupts that life, and eventually causes Tenar to question everything she has ever known. Ged, too, finds something of himself within the Tombs, although he chooses to relinquish it later.
The Farthest Shore finds Earthsea in crisis: somehow, magic is being drained from the world. Now Archmage, Ged must leave the safe haven of Roke in order to discover the source of the blight. He is joined by Arren, a puppy-cute young prince determined to live up to his noble lineage by serving his chosen mentor as best he can. Their voyage takes them across the seas and into the Dry Land, and to the skies on dragons' wings. Le Guin has said she feels this is the least complete of the trilogy, as it deals with death, which is difficult to speak about from personal experience. Still, the sometimes dreamlike quality of the novel only renders it, in my mind, even more beautiful.
Twenty-some years later, a more mature Le Guin discovered she hadn't finished with Earthsea. The result was Tehanu, a book which is by no means fit for the average adolescent. In it, Le Guin returns to the story of Tenar, former priestess of Atuan turned farmer's wife, and through her examines the world of Earthsea with older and sharper eyes. Ged returns as well, for the first time bereft of the trappings of wizardly power. Between them is Therru, a scarred, burned, and quiet child whose identity is a mystery. This is a deeply feminist book, one which has few answers, but asks many eloquent questions. It, too, is Le Guin at her best.
A piece of The Dispossessed lives inside Orsinian Tales. Stories with a strong Eastern European cast to them bring home the hardships of life and the choices that people have. Ranging in apparent time from the early 18th century to the mid-19th, in place from mining and industry towns with no future to cities like Krasnoy with no freedom, they make the poetic unusually personal, putting abstract ideas to the test in the hearts of human beings. One of my two favorite collections of Le Guin's, this book concentrates on the psychological spaces where people meet and affect one another.
The counterpart to The Dispossessed has always been The Left Hand of Darkness, replacing the process of choice with that of understanding. The Compass Rose encapsulates that moment when your intuition speaks and the world makes sense. Le Guin doesn't bother with most of the trappings of life as we know it. She describes quantum particles, the movements of the stars, and human and animal emotions in the same language, beautifully poetic and intellectually distant, accessible only to the emotions, the intuition, or the subconcious. This is not a collection for the scientific at heart, unless you believe in magic. It is not for the religious, unless you are deeply spiritual. These stories are Le Guin at her most poetic and original, with tales that may or may not brush the traditional lines of Science Fiction, but reach beyond those lines to break from ordinary life much more than any space opera ever did. This is one of my two favorite collections of Le Guin's.
Searoad is set in a small town in Oregon, following lives that seem a little less remote than those in Orsinian Tales. Some of the stories are every bit as good as the rest of Le Guin's, but some are less so. Themes, people, and places from the stories cross, but somehow there seems less connection between the individual people and stories than in her other collections. A few gems, like "Texts" (about a woman who can read sea foam and lace-work), but many of the others are less enthralling. If you really like Le Guin's more mundane stories, you might like this collection, but I found myself unable to finish two of the short stories at all.
Without a doubt one of the zaniest and most interesting collections is Buffalo Gals, a hodgepodge mix of animal myths, plant myths, science fiction, fantasy, poems, short stories, and anything else Le Guin felt like putting in here. It's a masterpiece of Wild Magic, of breaking the wheel and resurecting the connections between all beings. This is the execution of so much of Le Guin's theory, of the Gethen's ability to see the future and of the ansible. This is what the word "collection" really means.
A combination of fantasy and science fiction in classical Le Guin mode, The Wind's Twelve Quarters is easy to read and remarkably easy to comprehend, for Le Guin. If you have read very little of her work, or have trouble understanding it, I recommend this book as a starting place. This is not to say that fans wouldn't love it too. I suspect they would, since I did.
It's hard to tell if The Eye of the Heron is in the Ecumenical future or not, since the people of Victoria are cut off from other civilizations. But it is certain that they were sent from Earth as a prison colony, some of them for crimes, some of them for believing in peace. Now the clash between the two ideas these people represent has come to a head, catching the daughter of the planet's most powerful man between them. Luz is no fool, but she sees what the peace-lovers are trying to do, and she can't help but be intrigued. A new town, a new colony in another place, where things could be different. It seems impossible, but for Luz, nothing is impossible. Parts of the story are wonderful, other parts seemed a little filled-in. An interesting conception, but less than perfect follow-through, compared to LeGuin's normally high standards.
The Lathe of Heaven is one of LeGuin's most disturbing novels ever. George Orr is the most ordinary man in existence- literally. Because he is existence. He is the portal through which the power of God, the universe, or whatever you want to call it, is channeled. He changes everything, refines the future to perfection, but he does not want the power.
Dr. Haber thinks he has just another drug case on his hands when Orr is sent to his office. He can see right through this defenseless man, and Haber can dominate him. But what if Orr's fears are right? What if the dreams are wrong, what if perfection is not only impossible, but deadly? Can Haber resist the absolute power given to him in this meek dreamer? Or will the entire world be destroyed by such hubris? Frightening and disorienting, this book cuts to the heart of truth and reality, stripping away the reader's defenses along with Orr's. An incredibly powerful book that should only be read if you don't have to be sane the next day.
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