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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Really good. It's not quite on the level of Le Guin's later, towering achievements like The Left Hand of Darkness, Earthsea, or The Word for World is Forest, but you can see where she'll go from here, and her incredible ability at creating new societies and real people within them is fully present.
3 1/2 stars.
Le Guin does an amazing job of combining fantasy with science fiction, anthropology and psychology, creating a thoroughly enjoyable, but also effectively illuminating work about the possible future which is also about the possible past and also about everything in between. And if my sentence sounds complicated, it is only because i am not Ursula K. Le Guin.
Le Guin does an amazing job of combining fantasy with science fiction, anthropology and psychology, creating a thoroughly enjoyable, but also effectively illuminating work about the possible future which is also about the possible past and also about everything in between. And if my sentence sounds complicated, it is only because i am not Ursula K. Le Guin.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Not quite as good as rocannon's world, but still well worth a read
This book was really short, so it felt like a piece of a book. I thought it was good but not as good as other things written by LeGuin. (I was having a nasty day when I read most of it, and also the print is really small, so I was being unfairly hard on it).
An early Le Guin novel, and an excellent. I admire the way she can build a complex, detailed world in such an economical way, and how every character has many facets.
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This novel is about a colony of people that have been stranded on a foreign planet for many years. They came to this planet to study its in habitants. However, they have become stranded and have been so for 10 years of this foreign planets cycle—equalling 600 regular years. This group is regarded by the natives as a group of witches they refer to as farborns. The natives themselves are a nomadic people, only settling down for the winter to withstand the cold and the savages know as the gaal. This year, the gaal have become a large pillaging army rather than small, trickling groups of families migrating south. They now pose a great threat to the natives and the farborns. Although these two groups have many differences, they must now decide whether to come together and work toward a common goal: survival.
So far, I have read four of Ursula Le Guin’s novel’s and I think this one was my favourite. I really liked this book. I thought it was really interesting how Le Guin explores so many different sides of humanity. What I like most about this book was that there was a lot of character development and relationship-building. I have found that in some of her other books, such as the City of Illusions, the main character is more on a solitary pilgrimage. However, in this novel, many interesting (and not necessarily romantic) relationships develop adding deeper meaning (for me, anyway) and making it a more compelling read. Now that I have read some of her other books from the Hainish cycle, I understand more details about this book. For example, that this planet is Werel, that the Farborns are Terrans, and that these Terrans were a part of the League of All Worlds. However, having not known this while I was reading it, I found it interesting no being sure which group were really the humans! Le Guin seems to make a mystery of that a times! Over all, I really liked it! Thumbs up.
So far, I have read four of Ursula Le Guin’s novel’s and I think this one was my favourite. I really liked this book. I thought it was really interesting how Le Guin explores so many different sides of humanity. What I like most about this book was that there was a lot of character development and relationship-building. I have found that in some of her other books, such as the City of Illusions, the main character is more on a solitary pilgrimage. However, in this novel, many interesting (and not necessarily romantic) relationships develop adding deeper meaning (for me, anyway) and making it a more compelling read. Now that I have read some of her other books from the Hainish cycle, I understand more details about this book. For example, that this planet is Werel, that the Farborns are Terrans, and that these Terrans were a part of the League of All Worlds. However, having not known this while I was reading it, I found it interesting no being sure which group were really the humans! Le Guin seems to make a mystery of that a times! Over all, I really liked it! Thumbs up.
This second novel (more of a novella) in the Hainish Cycle essentially depicts two communities struggling to get past their differences to endure a siege from a third, much larger one. The sci-fi elements are, once again, there mostly for flavor, as one of the communities is composed of far descendants from a marooned space-faring expedition and that's about it, though it does allow LeGuin to sprinkle the world and the human (alterran) characters' experience with great tidbits about the knowledge that has managed to survive since that expedition's arrival, the effort of trying to preserve a culture and laws that have lost relevance with time and the consequences of disrupting a planet and its peoples' natural development with their arrival. The plot itself is pretty straightforward, including a romance that I don't think really gets the time it needs, but LeGuin's prose is as good as ever and generally a joy to read.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
medium-paced