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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
A solid 3/5.
Interesting world, and ominous in the Hainish Cycle, that the League of All Worlds has gone quiet.
The societies and HILFs seen on Werel are at first interesting, but devolve slowly to being a little bland. An interesting concept that could have been explored more like in Karhide with LHoD.
The book also loses marks for being surprisingly sexist, which surprises me for a Le Guin work, but apparently she has spoken to this previously and acknowledges that she fell too easily into traditional gendered roles here in Planet of Exile.
At it's heart, the novel appears to be love at first sight blended with sci-fi & a Romeo/Juliet dichotomy thrown in, however a deeper reading gives insight into survival instincts and adapting to your environs, overcoming and dealing with biases. A much more sci-fi focused story than the previous, but it didn't capture the same breathy adventure, or lingering sadness that Rocannon's World had for me.
Interesting world, and ominous in the Hainish Cycle, that the League of All Worlds has gone quiet.
The societies and HILFs seen on Werel are at first interesting, but devolve slowly to being a little bland. An interesting concept that could have been explored more like in Karhide with LHoD.
The book also loses marks for being surprisingly sexist, which surprises me for a Le Guin work, but apparently she has spoken to this previously and acknowledges that she fell too easily into traditional gendered roles here in Planet of Exile.
At it's heart, the novel appears to be love at first sight blended with sci-fi & a Romeo/Juliet dichotomy thrown in, however a deeper reading gives insight into survival instincts and adapting to your environs, overcoming and dealing with biases. A much more sci-fi focused story than the previous, but it didn't capture the same breathy adventure, or lingering sadness that Rocannon's World had for me.
Not her best but still SO worth it as a gem of the early ekumen!
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is a big step up from Rocannen's World in plotting, with a much tighter and tenser plot line following a dual set of villages through an impending crisis, with a set of star-crossed lovers at the centre. Like the plot, the world building is less expansive but more fleshed out, with depth achieved from the tight focus.
Tiptree's biography, which I just read, reveals how much Le Guin agonised about her inability to centre stories on female protagonists, which is puzzling reading these, because I feel that the women get equal treatment with the men for a good part of the book, and their perspective, while literally alien, is the more compellingly realised one.
On the whole, another great short read - looking forward to getting to something a bit longer.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-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:
No
Love the interplay of the 2 species on this planet, love Le Guin's wordbuilding, just great all around. Lower rating just because it was rather uneventful and overshadowed by City of Illusion, which I read right after reading this.
Taken from my review of The Left Hand of Darkness:
I tried a new experiment when I started The Left Hand of Darkness. I found several other Le Guin books on Hoopla, so in the course of reading this, I also listened to [b:Planet of Exile|201882|Planet of Exile|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1334148719s/201882.jpg|1642607] and [b:City of Illusions|201889|City of Illusions|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1382955526s/201889.jpg|89334]. Doing this was interesting, because it allowed me to see a few themes in the Hainish cycle that I wouldn't necessarily have noticed.
For example, LHoD's interest in the space between genders signals a theme in her work. Each book deals with the space between elements that are often clearly demarcated in our society. Genly Ai's relationship with a Winter local develops into something between friendship and love, but isn't easy to label (for me anyway) due to its mostly asexual nature. Likewise, because the other political players in the novel are constantly manipulating Ai to improve their position, it creates a strange middle ground between cooperation and betrayal.
The other books in the series also deal with this space between: In City of Illusions, the protagonist, Falk, spends the entire novel seeking out and fearing the Shing, rumored to be monstrous rulers of the planet who erased his memory. As his journey continues, they prove to be somewhere between human and alien, friend and enemy. The book is less effective than LHoD, because it ends up answering this question in a simpler and more traditional way than I hoped for.
City of Illusions also explores a middle ground in identity. By the end of the book (minor spoiler), Falk finds that due to his loss of memory, he has lived 2 completely separate lives. It's only by coming to terms with both lives and both sets of memories that he can achieve his ultimate goal. In the midst of a fairly typical sci-fi read, it was only by reading others at the same time that I noticed the interesting similarity in theme.
(spoiler over)
Finally, I listened to Planet of Exile at the same time, which also deals with the space between. It follows two rival societies on the planet Werel who have to find peace in order to survive the coming years-long winter. They spend most of the book vacillating between enemy and ally, and each views the other as something other than human. In an interesting execution that I don't believe I've seen before, each community refers only to themselves as human. So as the reader switches back and forth between perspectives, the society that is "human" changes with them.
(mild spoiler ahead) PoE also deals with identity, but on a societal level. We come to discover that one of the rival societies is the dying remains of an Earth colony, who are dying out specifically because of the League of All Worlds' rules against interfering with the development of prospective planets. Because they've had to forget Earth's technology and remain somewhat isolated, they've been in decline for decades. By the end of the novel, their only chance of long-term survival is to combine their society with their rival's, which further blurs the line between human/alien, and between home/exile.
(spoiler over)
This was my first foray into Le Guin, and I enjoyed it largely because of these parallels. While the Hainish cycle is by no means my favorite sci-fi series, The Left Hand of Darkness was well-written and thoughtful, and the others improved by reading them with it. I think my experiment was a success, and that I'll probably stack books by the same author again as time goes on.
I tried a new experiment when I started The Left Hand of Darkness. I found several other Le Guin books on Hoopla, so in the course of reading this, I also listened to [b:Planet of Exile|201882|Planet of Exile|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1334148719s/201882.jpg|1642607] and [b:City of Illusions|201889|City of Illusions|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1382955526s/201889.jpg|89334]. Doing this was interesting, because it allowed me to see a few themes in the Hainish cycle that I wouldn't necessarily have noticed.
For example, LHoD's interest in the space between genders signals a theme in her work. Each book deals with the space between elements that are often clearly demarcated in our society. Genly Ai's relationship with a Winter local develops into something between friendship and love, but isn't easy to label (for me anyway) due to its mostly asexual nature. Likewise, because the other political players in the novel are constantly manipulating Ai to improve their position, it creates a strange middle ground between cooperation and betrayal.
The other books in the series also deal with this space between: In City of Illusions, the protagonist, Falk, spends the entire novel seeking out and fearing the Shing, rumored to be monstrous rulers of the planet who erased his memory. As his journey continues, they prove to be somewhere between human and alien, friend and enemy. The book is less effective than LHoD, because it ends up answering this question in a simpler and more traditional way than I hoped for.
City of Illusions also explores a middle ground in identity. By the end of the book (minor spoiler), Falk finds that due to his loss of memory, he has lived 2 completely separate lives. It's only by coming to terms with both lives and both sets of memories that he can achieve his ultimate goal. In the midst of a fairly typical sci-fi read, it was only by reading others at the same time that I noticed the interesting similarity in theme.
(spoiler over)
Finally, I listened to Planet of Exile at the same time, which also deals with the space between. It follows two rival societies on the planet Werel who have to find peace in order to survive the coming years-long winter. They spend most of the book vacillating between enemy and ally, and each views the other as something other than human. In an interesting execution that I don't believe I've seen before, each community refers only to themselves as human. So as the reader switches back and forth between perspectives, the society that is "human" changes with them.
(mild spoiler ahead) PoE also deals with identity, but on a societal level. We come to discover that one of the rival societies is the dying remains of an Earth colony, who are dying out specifically because of the League of All Worlds' rules against interfering with the development of prospective planets. Because they've had to forget Earth's technology and remain somewhat isolated, they've been in decline for decades. By the end of the novel, their only chance of long-term survival is to combine their society with their rival's, which further blurs the line between human/alien, and between home/exile.
(spoiler over)
This was my first foray into Le Guin, and I enjoyed it largely because of these parallels. While the Hainish cycle is by no means my favorite sci-fi series, The Left Hand of Darkness was well-written and thoughtful, and the others improved by reading them with it. I think my experiment was a success, and that I'll probably stack books by the same author again as time goes on.
I hate to give this a low rating but it just didn't grab me the way a lot of LeGuin's writing does! The characters were hard for me to get attached to, and the Tevar were just *so* ragingly bigoted and obstinate that it was frustrating to read the stuff from Wold's perspective, and he's one of the more reasonable among them! I still appreciate the ideas at play and the beauty of her prose, but this particular novel just didn't do much for me.
I feel like the first disclaimer of a Planet of Exile review should state that this is far more coherent and interesting than Rocannon's World; nonetheless, we only glimpse the Le Guin we have come to know from her later books through themes and philosophies within the pages of this story.
Given the miniscule page count, it's not a surprise that this story felt overly ambitious and strangely paced. In one of her later introductions to an Earthsea novel, Le Guin mentions not wanting to write conflicts in the form of war; this thought would have vastly improved the net of narratives found in Planet of Exile. In all honesty, I didn't much care for the impeding barbarian siege, nor for the love story - a pity, as these two points function as the main plot anchors of the story.
A more anthropological look at these differing societies and their clashes of customs, culminating in a need to work together to stand fast against the 15 years of winter would have been a far more interesting approach to this story. The thoughts Le Guin throws into the room regarding belonging, alienation and community are thought-provoking and have surely inspired modern-day scifi authors in their writing; nonetheless, I think I would enjoy rereading Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan books over this one if I wanted to revisit an exploration of those ideas.
I'm not saying that this book was bad - it was simply average and lacked the philosophical edge and careful writing that I have grown to appreciate so much from Le Guin. I have high hopes for the next Hainish novel nonetheless; I am sure that things will only get better from here.
Given the miniscule page count, it's not a surprise that this story felt overly ambitious and strangely paced. In one of her later introductions to an Earthsea novel, Le Guin mentions not wanting to write conflicts in the form of war; this thought would have vastly improved the net of narratives found in Planet of Exile. In all honesty, I didn't much care for the impeding barbarian siege, nor for the love story - a pity, as these two points function as the main plot anchors of the story.
A more anthropological look at these differing societies and their clashes of customs, culminating in a need to work together to stand fast against the 15 years of winter would have been a far more interesting approach to this story. The thoughts Le Guin throws into the room regarding belonging, alienation and community are thought-provoking and have surely inspired modern-day scifi authors in their writing; nonetheless, I think I would enjoy rereading Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan books over this one if I wanted to revisit an exploration of those ideas.
I'm not saying that this book was bad - it was simply average and lacked the philosophical edge and careful writing that I have grown to appreciate so much from Le Guin. I have high hopes for the next Hainish novel nonetheless; I am sure that things will only get better from here.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No