Have you ever walked down an empty street at night and not be able to help noticing the bright lights inside of the warm houses? It's a cliche but people look sad, or happy, or anything else there is to feel. It's that feeling of knowing that people are feeling something and it's got nothing what...
Meh. A heavy-handed, often simplistic novel, perhaps because it's written for children or teens. The conflict is very neatly divided into black and white. The polytheistic city of Ansul was famed for its literary and scholarly culture, until the Alds of Asudar invaded, raping, murdering, and wrec...
Dear Ursula Le Guin, You've given me many gifts over the years, and I cherish them all, so it is fitting that your most recent gift is a book of the same name. I know it is not the favourite of many of my friends who love your work too, and I don't know if I can even call it a favourite, but I ac...
Thoughts on The DispossessedOf the various layers of content in The Dispossessed, the most obvious is the socio-political: capitalism vs. anarchistic-communism. The claim often made is that, even though her heart is with the latter, she nonetheless treats the two structures impartially. The claim...
This is a hard book to summarize and it may prove maddening to people who prefer their stories to be more straightforward. There isn’t much to it; it’s a slim book that can be read in a matter of hours. But it manages to cram its different threads into one compact package.While the protagonists a...
I'm glad I read this book again — as an adult I understood it much better than when I was a teenager. "Tehanu" is the follow-up to "The Tombs of Atuan," and it was a bit of a shock when I first read it. "Tombs" ended with the promise of a typical fantasy ending. The heroine and the wizard enter t...
Superman needed Kryptonite in order to keep the stories interesting over the years (and, with “red” Kryptonite, somewhat chaotic and silly). So, it’s no wonder that when a wizard has attained immense power and saved the universe from destruction that said wizard must run into her/his own version ...
The Other Wind is a beautiful book. I don't think I liked it all that much the first time I read it, but now I see exactly how it fits. It's less incongruous than Tehanu, for me, but follows on neatly enough -- and it does use all the ideas and feelings that are brought up in Tehanu. Set a long t...
First things first: I adore Ursula Le Guin’s work. I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read of hers so far (you can read my reviews of Lavinia, Changing Planes, and The Tombs of Atuan here at the blog), and I usually read them shortly after purchasing because I can’t wait to find out where her imaginati...
I love Ursula K. Le Guin’s first two Earthsea novels. A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan are among my two favourite fantasy novels, and together I think they form an essential duology that showcases some of the most compelling and truthful storytelling about identity and finding onesel...
The short version first . . .Actually it is the longer version from the one associated with the Worlds of Exile and Illusion compendium which was what I read. . .You find yourself emerging from darkness and unconsciousness into a world of light, trees, and lifeforms. You can’t remember your name,...
Rocannon's World was Ursula K. LeGuin's first published novel and is the first of her novels I have read. I've always thought that if I read Le Guin I would read The Left Hand of Darkness, since it was the big prize winner and the one everyone read back in the 1970's, during the years after it fi...
(I chose to compare this book to a nonfiction work for my review.)The alien civilization in Ursula K Le Guin’s The Telling is deeply evocative of post-Cultural Revolution China. A few months ago I read the non-fiction book Song & Silence: Ethnic Revival On China’s Southwest Borders by Sara L. M. ...
This MAY be the edition I have: at any rate the cover picture is the same.Each story in this volume is introduced by a short squib from the author. If you haven't read the stories before, you might want to leave this bit until afterward.Contents:(1) Semley's Necklace: This is also the lead-in to ...
It's hard to rate an anthology - I think the average mark for the stories (see below for individual comments, written as I read them) would not be a four. But the collection works as a whole, in its diversity.I need to remember, though, that this whole series is not a short story collection. It's...
Part evocative and subtle, part heavy-handed but still compelling.This is a novella about the devastation a human colony wreaks on a forested world and its inhabitants, and how the inhabitants must fight back despite their habitual peacefulness -- written by a U.S. author during the U.S.'s partic...
הוצ´ זמורה ביתן מודן, 1982, 313 עמ´.הקדמה: כחובבת מד"ב ופנטסיה, קראתי במספר הזדמנויות על נפלאות הכתיבה של אחת אורסולה ק. לה גווין. היא נחשבת בין הנשים היוצרות החשובות בזאנר האמור. אולם, לא נפגשתי בספריה עד לא מזמן. ומדוע אני כותבת עד לא מזמן? כי לאחרונה נקרתה לי ההזדמנות כאשר חברתי רצתה, באכזריות...
Though Ursula K Le Guin is undoubtedly one of my favorite writers of all time, this is only the second collection of hers I've read, which actually isn't super unusual, since I rarely read collections.But this is a very atypical work for Le Guin, as it's essentially realism. It has the feel of a ...
Ursula Le Guin is best known for her fantasy and her science fiction writings, though she also writes other fiction as well as poetry, articles and reviews. The short stories in this 1994 collection, while firmly in the SF genre, also demonstrate her ability to compose in various tones, from ligh...
"I don't know. Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I know know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass ...
“Bana öyle geliyor ki erkeklerin zayıf ve tehlikeli oldukları nokta, kibirleri. Kadının bir merkezi vardır, bir merkezdir kadın. Ama erkekler öyle değil, onlar erişmektir, uzanmaktır. O yüzden uzanırlar ve bir şeyler koparırlar, bunları etraflarına istif ederler ve ‘ben buyum, ben şuyum, bu benim...
The short version first . . .Ursula K. Le Guin is one of today's most famous living science fiction/fantasy authors. The titles of her works are frequently in contention for if not announced as winners of the coveted Hugo and Nebula Awards for Excellence in Science Fiction. Her writing consistent...
There is just no denying it: Ursula le Guin is one of the greatest writers of the last 50 years (at least), and I firmly believe that the only reason she does not get more recognition for her commentary on race, politics, and - especially - gender - is because she sets much of that discussion off...
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.Powers is the third and, in my opinion, the best of the Annals of the Western Shore novels. In this book, we meet Gavir, a slave in the City State of Etra. Gavir was born in the marshes but was stolen, along with his sister, by slavers and brought to Etra. ...
О Боги, я вернулась к Волшебнику еще раз. Самый первый раз мне подарил эту трилогию отец, заказал тогда в интернет-магазине и невзначай отдал. Боги-боги, почему я не сохранила книгу? Засунула куда-то и теперь она там и стоит, никто ее не читает.В детстве я не смогла продраться дальше половины пе...