Take a photo of a barcode or cover
blchandler9000 's review for:
Planet of Exile
by Ursula K. Le Guin
On a faraway world, two different races of humans, one native, the other not, live in uncomfortable peace. The natives are primitive, they haven't even discovered the wheel. The exiles have simplified their lives to not influence the native tribes, but privately maintain some of the knowledge of the empire they once belonged to. But as the long winter approaches, a threat from the north might force these two tribes together.
This book started very strong, but lost my excitement about half way. Le Guin does what few authors can effectively, I feel, and that is bounce from different characters' perspective. She also really makes the thoughts and motivations for the protagonists not just clear, but believable.
It's science fiction, but the trappings of spaceships and blasters are well in the past. The exiles are people who have been abandoned generations ago and forced to make a home of a world that does not really want them. They have a few scifi gifts, like telepathy and mind-reading, but beyond that, many of the story's trappings would feel just as at home in fantasy as in scifi. In fact, this is the 2nd scifi book of Le Guin's that I read which made me think, "This is really a fantasy," and I liked that about the book.
But the story's antagonists show up about halfway through the book, and the battle between them and the heroes was less interesting to me than the subdued conflict between the natives and exiles, and the exiles and themselves. Still, it was a good book, and interesting to see how Le Guin was writing early in her career.
This book started very strong, but lost my excitement about half way. Le Guin does what few authors can effectively, I feel, and that is bounce from different characters' perspective. She also really makes the thoughts and motivations for the protagonists not just clear, but believable.
It's science fiction, but the trappings of spaceships and blasters are well in the past. The exiles are people who have been abandoned generations ago and forced to make a home of a world that does not really want them. They have a few scifi gifts, like telepathy and mind-reading, but beyond that, many of the story's trappings would feel just as at home in fantasy as in scifi. In fact, this is the 2nd scifi book of Le Guin's that I read which made me think, "This is really a fantasy," and I liked that about the book.
But the story's antagonists show up about halfway through the book, and the battle between them and the heroes was less interesting to me than the subdued conflict between the natives and exiles, and the exiles and themselves. Still, it was a good book, and interesting to see how Le Guin was writing early in her career.