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Ursula K LeGuin Message Board 1/1/2012
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Author LeGuin's Book Reviews

A Wizard of Earthsea - Earthsea 1
This is the first of a trilogy of stories in the world of Earthsea which is set in a Tolkien-time of dragons, wizards, and magic which lives and works alongside the trades of blacksmith and farmer. On the island of Gont, long famous for its wizards, lives a village boy named Sparrowhawk. His natural powers are soon put to the test when the island is invaded by pirates who run riot, burning and looting. Cloaking the village in fog and illusion-casting he ...
City of Illusions
Have you ever known you were different from the people you were around? Grew up with? You know that you are different, special in a way but you don't understand where you came from and why. This is the basic theme for the book; searching to find who you are and your origins. The book is set in what seems to be the future USA, using in reference names like "The Sierras" and "The Enclave of Kansas". The main character is a young man named Falk,...
Planet of Exile
For 600 years, a colony of humans have lived on Gamma Draconis III. It's a planet that has various humanoid species and clans, where a planetary year lasts 60 Earth years, so each person experiences but one long turn of the seaons in a lifetime. Constrained by League of All Worlds precepts not to use or introduce more sophisticated technologies to the planet's inhabitants than they already have, the "Alterrans" have slowly devolved -- forgetting the use ...
Rocannon's World
Rocannon is a 43-year-old galactic ethnologist based on the colony of New South Georgia. One day a lordly female of the Angyar race (from a distant, largely unexplored planet) appears at his museum and demands the return of a golden necklace with a blue gem that is on display. The curators hand it over, and Rocannon decides to follow the mysterious but beautiful female to her home world, where at least four or five different higher life forms live in une...

LeGuin booklist

Tehanu - Earthsea 4
This entire book takes place on Gont, the island of Ged/Sparrowhawk's birth. Bereft of most or all of his magic powers from the epic battle in book three, he has returned to Gont to hide from the world. This book centers on Tenar, the girl he rescued from the Tombs of Atuan in book two about 25 years before, now an older woman, and Therru, a young girl raped and burned into disfigurement, and left for dead. The two strange women bond and settle in the fa...
The Birthday Of The World
Ursula K. Le Guin HarperCollins, Mar 2002, 24,95, 384 pp. ISBN: 0066212537 Fans of deep science fiction that stars aliens in order to dig into the human condition will want to read Ursula K. Le Guin's powerful anthology. The eight stories are all excellent as each one looks into a “excursion” of sorts with some actuality occurring and others happening inside the minds of the key cast members. Each tale is different with unique perspectives. ...
The Dispossessed
A description of a young man's journey thorugh two linked and opposite socieities, one anarchist/communistic, the other capitalist/repressive, in a search for his own identity and political freedom and justice. ...
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Shevek, a young man with a great gift for physics, is born on the moon, Annares. He is born among the anarchists which settled that world one-hundred-seventy year before from Urras after social revolution broke out there. He wants to share his theory of time with all, Anarresti and Urrasti alike. And he wants, more than anything, to see humanity reunited. He comes to realize, at the goading of his friend Bedap, that his society is degenerating. It is ...
The Eye of the Heron
Ursula K. Le Guin Starscape, Sep 2003, 5.99, 179 pp. ISBN: 0765346125 The planet Victoria was founded as a prison colony, but the original mission expired. The descendents of the prisoners and guards/wardens evolved into two prime groups: the Shantih farmers and those who live in the City. The agricultural residents of Shantih believe in independence for the individual and peaceful coexistence as a group. Bosses reign over the City and employ f...
The Farthest Shore - Earthsea 3
The great finale of the Earthsea trilogy is set in a Tolkien-time of wizards and dragons, and has a similar theme to Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' series. Sparrowhawk, the goat-boy from the remote island of Gont, is now the Archmage of Roke Island, the heartland of the wizards. He has survived a lifetime of wild adventure. Yet the greatest of his achievements, to find the amulet of Erreth-Akbe graved with the lost rune-symbol of unity, has ...

Ursula K. Le Guin list of books

The Lathe of Heaven
George Orr, a perfect cipher, the ultimately average man, has effective dreams - dreams that change reality. This is a nightmare; these are real dreams - he does not control them or their content, and they answer his unconscious and subconscious desires, not his waking wishes. Orr lives in terror of his dreams. His efforts to stop them send him into the care of Dr. Haber, a psychiatrist who has a machine that can monitor and guide dreams, and who has ...
The Left Hand of Darkness
The envoy Genly Ai has been sent to the planet Gethen to invite the inhabitants to join the Ecumen, a federation of worlds slowly reuniting after an inter-galactic war. Only, Gethen was the site of a genetic engineering experiment where all the inhabitants are humans capable of being either male or female, partly at will but partly by chance of circumstances each month. Genly arrives in Karhide where he is discovered by Lord Estraven, an astute poli...
The Other Wind
This book comes after the story "Dragonfly" from "Tales from Earthsea". A young sorcerer dreams of the land of death and sees the dead trying to get free through him. Dragons start to attack the islands and force people to move farther east. Only Tehanu, Irian and a princess from the Kargs can find the connection between the dreams and the dragons....
The Telling
LeGuin's 2000 addition to the loose Hainish cycle that began with her very first sci-fi novel in 1966 concerns Sutty, an Observer for the Ekumen federation, who is studying the planet of Aka. The Corporation State of Aka has banned all traditional language and religious practices, and Sutty has been kept to the large and modern city of Dovza. (Much of this resembles recent historical developments far back on Earth.) But she unexpectedly receives permissi...
The Tombs of Atuan - Earthsea 2
The Tombs of Atuan is the second novel in the Earthsea fantasy series. It is a continuation of the life story of Ged after he is made a wizard. As a child, Arha is taken from her parents to be raised to become the reincarnation of the high priestess of the Nameless Ones, ancient, malevolent non-human powers. She grows up in an isolated temple complex in the desert. When she is 15, however, she spies through a peephole a strange man lost in the vast...
The Word for World is Forest
Humans try to colonize a forest planet and enslave the native inhibitants. The Athsheans are fed up with the situation and led by one of them they rebel....

Ursula K. Le Guin novels

Voices - Annals of the Western Shore
Memer learns the art of reading--which is forbidden by her oppressors, the Alds--and this knowledge is key in the struggle for freedom. She is the daughter of a woman from Ansul and an Ald, and lives at the House of the Oracle with the Waylord who keeps a secret library and the old faith. While out shopping for the household, Memer meets a woman named Gry with her halflion, Shetar. She is the wife of the Maker Orrec Caspro, and they seek the Waylord'...