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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
adventurous
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Xenophobia
Moderate: Violence
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
hopeful
reflective
tense
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:
Yes
I liked this one more than Rocannon's world. There are some very sexist characters, but I felt like Le Guin was exploring how racism and sexism are intertwined.
Not my favorite Le Guin by any means but she is always a breath of fresh air after going through some staler reads.
“Man and non-man cannot work together. 600 years of failure should tell you that. Your folly was only their pretext. If they hadn’t turned on us over it they would have found something else very soon. They are our enemies as much as the Gaul or the Winter or the rest of this planet that doesn’t want us. We can make no alliances but among ourselves. We’re on our own. Never hold your hand out to any creature that belongs to this world.”
As they went up the street to enter his house she asked, “why did you enter Tevar to save the people?” It seemed a strange question to him. “Because they wouldn’t save themselves.” “That’s no reason, Altera.” “It is a reason, Rolery. You can’t just sit there watching the bastards kill off people slowly. Anyhow, I want to fight, to fight back.” “But your town. How do you feed these people you brought here? If the Gaul lay siege, or afterwards, in Winter?” “We have enough. Food’s not our worry. All we need is men.”
“Why is it that you don’t speak mind speech to the Gaul? Tell them to go, as you told me on the beach to run to the stack. As your herdsman told the Han?” “Men aren’t Han,” he said. And it occurred to her that he was the only one of the them all that spoke of her people and their own and the Gaul all as men.”
“…life tends to adapt, after all.” As he said this Wattick got a very odd expression and stared at her. She felt guilty since she had no idea what he had been explaining to her. None of the key words were words in her language. “Life, what?” She inquired timidly. “Adapts. Reacts. Changes. Given enough pressure and enough generations, the favorable adaptation tends to prevail.”
“It seemed to him then that the old man’s death and the young man’s victory were the same thing. Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy. The joy that trembled in the cold wind between sky and sea, bright and brief in its fire. This was his fort, his city, his world. These were his people. He was no exile here. “Come.” He said to Rolery as the fire sank down to ashes. “Come. Let’s go home.”
“Man and non-man cannot work together. 600 years of failure should tell you that. Your folly was only their pretext. If they hadn’t turned on us over it they would have found something else very soon. They are our enemies as much as the Gaul or the Winter or the rest of this planet that doesn’t want us. We can make no alliances but among ourselves. We’re on our own. Never hold your hand out to any creature that belongs to this world.”
As they went up the street to enter his house she asked, “why did you enter Tevar to save the people?” It seemed a strange question to him. “Because they wouldn’t save themselves.” “That’s no reason, Altera.” “It is a reason, Rolery. You can’t just sit there watching the bastards kill off people slowly. Anyhow, I want to fight, to fight back.” “But your town. How do you feed these people you brought here? If the Gaul lay siege, or afterwards, in Winter?” “We have enough. Food’s not our worry. All we need is men.”
“Why is it that you don’t speak mind speech to the Gaul? Tell them to go, as you told me on the beach to run to the stack. As your herdsman told the Han?” “Men aren’t Han,” he said. And it occurred to her that he was the only one of the them all that spoke of her people and their own and the Gaul all as men.”
“…life tends to adapt, after all.” As he said this Wattick got a very odd expression and stared at her. She felt guilty since she had no idea what he had been explaining to her. None of the key words were words in her language. “Life, what?” She inquired timidly. “Adapts. Reacts. Changes. Given enough pressure and enough generations, the favorable adaptation tends to prevail.”
“It seemed to him then that the old man’s death and the young man’s victory were the same thing. Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy. The joy that trembled in the cold wind between sky and sea, bright and brief in its fire. This was his fort, his city, his world. These were his people. He was no exile here. “Come.” He said to Rolery as the fire sank down to ashes. “Come. Let’s go home.”
I have had a fascination with the work of Ursula K. Le Guin since I was in high school and had to read The Lathe of Heaven for a class project. Ever since then I have been obsessed with her, her writing, and the messages that she subtly embedded in her works. One of the saddest days of my adult life was January 22 of last year (2018) when I found out that Ursula had died. I literally sat on the edge of my bed and cried so much for the loss of such an integral and bright person and writer in our world. It still makes me tear up to think that she won't write anymore and that once I read through her works, that is all there will ever be. I am sure that reading Ursula's work and subscribing to her ideas for all of those years has helped make the person I am today and craft the ideas and thoughts that I have honed as mine. So, as an ode to Ursula, my lifetime goal is to read everything she wrote in her lifetime. Note, I always call her Ursula because that is who she was to me. Normally, I use proper references and the author's last names, but not for this one. I hope she doesn't mind!
The premise of Planet of Exile is not too complicated. There is a world called Werel on which a lost colony of humans is stranded. On this same planet, two other groups of natives live --The Gaal and The Tevarans. Of course, they don't get along. Werel has a funky orbit which causes it to have really long, usually harsh winters, and so this book chronicles what is going to be the start of winter. Usually, the Gaals travel south for the winter but for some reason this time they do not. It is rumored that The Gaals are planning to take over the world. Mixed in this is a love affair between the leader of the human colony, Jakob and Rolery the granddaughter of the Tevaran leader.
My thing with this book and a lot of others from the Hainish Cycle is that I tend to overlook the larger stories and focus more on the elements that I feel Ursula is trying to write about and explore in her writing. Usually, these are cultural and Anthropological themes since I assume she was well-versed in both the subjects since her father was a well-known Anthropologist (Alfred Kroeber). In this book, there are several themes that stuck out for me: race, sexuality and gender, and misogyny.
When it comes to Ursula's work I feel like people may tend to overlook those larger topics and focus more on specific things in her books and wonder why they are there. Usually, Ursula's books tend to focus on a male or have a lot of men as the main characters. Almost never is a female represented. I think that this has a lot to do with readership in the 60s and 70s when she was writing but there is also something deeper. If you look at the way males are represented, such as Jakob in this book, they are not stereotypically hypermasculine, or even really masculine. The same is true for females when they do appear they are not hyper forms of females. Rather, Ursula isn't focusing or really caring about gender or sexuality in her work; she is writing stories with characters that are androgynous. That is the key to understanding her works, in my opinion. What she is saying is grander; gender/sex/sexuality is not binary things and can be seen in all beings. We should look at humankind as human beings, rather than male or females or others.
Ursula takes a similar approach when it comes to race as well; she did not shy away from writing characters who were dark-skinned. In Planet of Exile she specifically has a character ask about the differences between skin colors, essentially asking if the species was the same and the doctor in that scene quickly passes that notion off and says that superficial things like skin color and eye color do not make a difference, we are the same regardless of those small attributes. I already ascribe to that notion, but to read it in a book from 1966 really jarred me; there are still people today who think that "race" is a real thing that separates us humans from each other.
On Goodreads, I gave this 5 stars because I don't know how or why I would give anything written by Ursula less than that. But really, I gave it 5 stars because I can see how this work and its brothers and sisters serve as a sort of starting point for women in science fiction and fantasy genres, but also as a depository for so many important ideas and theories about culture and society.
The premise of Planet of Exile is not too complicated. There is a world called Werel on which a lost colony of humans is stranded. On this same planet, two other groups of natives live --The Gaal and The Tevarans. Of course, they don't get along. Werel has a funky orbit which causes it to have really long, usually harsh winters, and so this book chronicles what is going to be the start of winter. Usually, the Gaals travel south for the winter but for some reason this time they do not. It is rumored that The Gaals are planning to take over the world. Mixed in this is a love affair between the leader of the human colony, Jakob and Rolery the granddaughter of the Tevaran leader.
My thing with this book and a lot of others from the Hainish Cycle is that I tend to overlook the larger stories and focus more on the elements that I feel Ursula is trying to write about and explore in her writing. Usually, these are cultural and Anthropological themes since I assume she was well-versed in both the subjects since her father was a well-known Anthropologist (Alfred Kroeber). In this book, there are several themes that stuck out for me: race, sexuality and gender, and misogyny.
When it comes to Ursula's work I feel like people may tend to overlook those larger topics and focus more on specific things in her books and wonder why they are there. Usually, Ursula's books tend to focus on a male or have a lot of men as the main characters. Almost never is a female represented. I think that this has a lot to do with readership in the 60s and 70s when she was writing but there is also something deeper. If you look at the way males are represented, such as Jakob in this book, they are not stereotypically hypermasculine, or even really masculine. The same is true for females when they do appear they are not hyper forms of females. Rather, Ursula isn't focusing or really caring about gender or sexuality in her work; she is writing stories with characters that are androgynous. That is the key to understanding her works, in my opinion. What she is saying is grander; gender/sex/sexuality is not binary things and can be seen in all beings. We should look at humankind as human beings, rather than male or females or others.
Ursula takes a similar approach when it comes to race as well; she did not shy away from writing characters who were dark-skinned. In Planet of Exile she specifically has a character ask about the differences between skin colors, essentially asking if the species was the same and the doctor in that scene quickly passes that notion off and says that superficial things like skin color and eye color do not make a difference, we are the same regardless of those small attributes. I already ascribe to that notion, but to read it in a book from 1966 really jarred me; there are still people today who think that "race" is a real thing that separates us humans from each other.
On Goodreads, I gave this 5 stars because I don't know how or why I would give anything written by Ursula less than that. But really, I gave it 5 stars because I can see how this work and its brothers and sisters serve as a sort of starting point for women in science fiction and fantasy genres, but also as a depository for so many important ideas and theories about culture and society.
This was a good read - a basic enough story framework, skillfully told and with a lot going on under the surface regarding gender roles and social constructions. The basic concept of a lost spacefaring colony living alongside the natives has been done a lot of times but LeGuin's skill elevates it from being something boring and predictable.
I also want to comment that I read the late 1970's edition where she has an added intro defending her work against 3rd wave feminists. Very much a product of its time.
I also want to comment that I read the late 1970's edition where she has an added intro defending her work against 3rd wave feminists. Very much a product of its time.
This fast yet thoughtful volume of the Hainish Cycle plays in themes of race and othering. A colony of humans have been stranded without contact for hundreds of years on a planet that is host to a better adapted species of humanoid.
The second of her Hainish novels, like Roccanon's World, this seemed simpler and less developed than her later novels like The Left Hand of Darkness.
The second of her Hainish novels, like Roccanon's World, this seemed simpler and less developed than her later novels like The Left Hand of Darkness.