broad thoughts: i love when fantasy is actually science fiction sososo much. i also think this is a really great collection of stories, that do benefit from being put together. not only do they compliment each other, with their sff approach, it’s just so rewarding when the links between the novels start emerging, in a way which wouldn’t hit as well if i read them separately with other book in between … it made me really excited, not just about the stories, but about big shared universes as a way to do scifi storytelling. if i log a culture novel in the next week it will be a direct result of this.

rocannon’s world: was the most interested in this one after reading ‘the necklace’ as a short story in the wind’s twelve quarters, which becomes the prologue here. i still think that is extraordinary, a perfect, efficient manifesto for bringing fantasy and science fiction together, for making magic technology. but it almost works better out of context. it’s not that the rest of the book drags it down, but it doesn’t do much else that isn’t embodied in those first pages, except lay out some rudiments of the league/universe — which do come to feel more worthwhile in the later novels here. the story’s good but a little slim, never much expands on the fairytale tone of the prologue, and so could be more convincingly real, and perhaps deserves to be bc the concept’s so excellent. although i did find the angels affectingly gross as an alien concept.

planet of exiles: i had fun with this, although again i wonder if it could have gone further with its work. the characters are more convincing but the pace is quick and the world feels a little brief. but i liked what it did do, the whole aliens in your own home. i think the novel as a whole is a better argument for how giving a scifi backdrop to your fantasy story furthers it, and allows you to justify and easily explain impossible relations and situations, which take what human beings are and do to extremes, which is already the thing what slays about fantasy, where fighting isn’t a metaphor, it’s war. here the alienation is aliens.

city of illusions: one for the hayt fans, although that’s possibly only me. dune messiah made me crazy 70% because i found that one character/move so compelling, and this does the same thing!! i was so excited and interested, even though neither this — nor dune messiah tbf — have fully done what i want them to do with it. what that is, i’m not sure! but more! anyway i still liked this and found it tricky and compelling, even though again, i think it could have done more to inspect and dig into the situation it’s built, and its non-rational, non-plot movement effect on the characters.

i wonder if it’s a part of the time it was written in. i don’t usually expect depth and character work from scifi of this period, i’m more than happy with cool space stations and big cat aliens, and it’s perhaps unfair that i’m expecting more here, especially because le guin doesn’t ever really become a full on character study writer. but i think the situations she sets up for her characters are interesting specifically because they are so psychological, particularly in the latter two texts, but even in the first, when it’s considered as a response to tolkien, and what lotr becomes towards its end, and so it seems a waste to just. be so efficient and conceptual. to only spend time in people’s minds to problem solve,  not to feel. does that make sense? i also don’t love a one guy is special and solves it all narrative, which two of these stories basically are. that approach means there’s basically no lastingly meaningful people beyond the main characters, and i think that lack of relationships, webbed, also makes the world feel significantly slighter. the exception is planet of exiles (because it has a romance) and i think that was my favourite.

there’s still much to like. le guin’s a lovely writer, sharp and beautiful and really well observed. i knew where i was. and, again, i think the concepts powering all of these are really good. the difference between a 3 and 4 star rating for me, on here, is whether i’d go out of my way to reread it in the future, and because of that, even with all my hesitations, this is an easy, instant 4 star. these are just such good ideas! i want to bask in them!