2009 Reading #37: Planet of Exile

[snurri]

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Dôra, Doralina by Rachel de Queiroz.
32. The Mercenaries by Donald E. Westlake.
33. A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter.
34. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart (Part One of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox).
35. Saint Paul: The First 150 Years by Virginia Brainard Kunz.
36. The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart (Part Two of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox).

37. Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin. It turns out that other than The Left Hand of Darkness, all my reading of the Hainish Cycle has been from the short stories. I'm pretty sure Planet is short enough to be a novella, but it's packed full of goodness, and as far as I can tell it hasn't lost a step since it was published in 1966. I particularly admire the way Le Guin grounds the reader in an alien setting with an economy of description, and comes back to that setting throughout. That and, of course, her trademark pragmatic humanism. Good stuff.

Comments

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

grounds the reader in an alien setting with an economy of description

Yes! Her prose is so sharp and on point, and she can turn that perfect phrase that makes you put down the book for a second and say, "Yes. That's it exactly." She's also capable of writing fantasy that doesn't need to have a giant map in order to be engaging, but can simply take place on a handful of farms.

(I saw her read last week from Lavinia and she was incredible.)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I need to spend some time catching up on her stuff, I think. I went through an intense Le Guin period a while back, but I missed a lot of it then.

[ken-schneyer.livejournal.com]

After you finish Planet of Exile, you must read City of Illusions, which is essentially a sequel. Also she did a different riff on the very-lengthy-seasons schtick in her story "Seasons of the Ansarac," which appears in the anthology Changing Planes,.

But the divine Ms. LeG is ageless. (She does say she'd change the gender pronouns in LHoD if she had the chance, and that she's not satisfied with the gender politics in the original three books of the Earthsea trilogy, but apart from that...)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

When I heard her comments about the pronouns in LHoD, I immediately thought that yeah, that was something that inhibited my experience of the book. But I don't know what the solution would be, really.

I'm going to try to find the rest of the Hainish books next, I think. I might go back and read Rocannon's World before City of Illusions.