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A review by whisperfox
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
2.0
It has taken me a while to write this review, because quite honestly this was the book I least liked out of all the LeGuin I read. It took a long time for this book to become available for me to read, and having finished it, I think I understand why -- at no point did I look forward to picking this book up.
There were aspects of it that were compelling and interesting. Linguistically, there was a lot going on, especially from the angle of how language and culture and worldview are all inextricably intertwined. The spiritual system was also very unusual, and I liked the way it was woven through the native everyday, and dictated a lot of their engagement with the world around them, and with opposition.
That being said, it was difficult to connect to this one. A lot of the characters I would consider protagonists were good people, but weak, or detached from the main plot. Or they were members of the native species, which while very well written, were just alien enough to be challenging to relate to. And the majority of the story is told from the worst character in the entire story.
Even recognizing that the unpleasantness of the narrator was likely a very intentional choice on LeGuin's part, meant to emphasize certain aspects of the story being told, and bring home the motivations at play here, reading the events of this story through that lens was so incredibly repulsive for me that it sullied the entire experience. I mean, he was a terrible person. I simply didn't feel that the pain of being inside those thoughts was worth it, in the end.
I think if this story was told as a flashback, where there was a bigger plot occurring (probably years, or even decades) after these events, I wouldn't have minded it as much. But as a stand-alone, where we see very limited outcomes, it was just a very unpleasant story to read. Difficult and harrowing stories are sometimes worth telling, of course, but this felt very out of place for me among the other Hainish entries, because there was so little hope to latch onto. All in all, this one just wasn't for me.
There were aspects of it that were compelling and interesting. Linguistically, there was a lot going on, especially from the angle of how language and culture and worldview are all inextricably intertwined. The spiritual system was also very unusual, and I liked the way it was woven through the native everyday, and dictated a lot of their engagement with the world around them, and with opposition.
That being said, it was difficult to connect to this one. A lot of the characters I would consider protagonists were good people, but weak, or detached from the main plot. Or they were members of the native species, which while very well written, were just alien enough to be challenging to relate to. And the majority of the story is told from the worst character in the entire story.
Even recognizing that the unpleasantness of the narrator was likely a very intentional choice on LeGuin's part, meant to emphasize certain aspects of the story being told, and bring home the motivations at play here, reading the events of this story through that lens was so incredibly repulsive for me that it sullied the entire experience. I mean, he was a terrible person. I simply didn't feel that the pain of being inside those thoughts was worth it, in the end.
I think if this story was told as a flashback, where there was a bigger plot occurring (probably years, or even decades) after these events, I wouldn't have minded it as much. But as a stand-alone, where we see very limited outcomes, it was just a very unpleasant story to read. Difficult and harrowing stories are sometimes worth telling, of course, but this felt very out of place for me among the other Hainish entries, because there was so little hope to latch onto. All in all, this one just wasn't for me.