Rocannon's World

After our experience with Left Hand of Darkness, I knew I wanted to read more Ursula K. Le Guin.  We ordered the American Heritage collection of Le Guin’s Hainish novels the day she passed.  As much as I enjoyed Ann Leckie’s trilogy, it is nice to return to an author with so much poetry in her prose.  Le Guin’s language is rich while always remaining easy to read, even allowed, which is how we are working through the novels in this collection.

Rocannon’s World is Le Guin’s first published novel, and it is a charming one.  It doesn’t have the depth and insight of Left Hand of Darkness, but I really enjoyed it.  It’s a short novel (116 pages in our edition), that combines science fiction with swords and sorcery fantasy.  Yeah, there are overtones of the pale outsider who comes to the world as its savior.  And yeah, there is a certain coming-of-age flavor in which the bookish scientist comes into his manhood as a warrior.  And yeah, there are a lot of stately blonde and beautiful women whose value seems to primarily be their stately blonde beauty.  I could see any one of those causing a problem for some readers.  But for some reason, I took those elements with a grain of salt.  I suspect that it’s because I trust and like the author, which goes a long way to influencing how we read a text.

There are a ton of cool world-building moments in the novel.  The preface in which Semley retrieves her necklace and describes space travel through the eyes of a fantasty character is way cool.  The vampiric Winged Ones and their city of horrors  are awesome, as are the Keimhrir who help Rocannon escape with his friends.  The windsteeds are fantastic.  The standoff with the strangers who want the necklace and are willing to kill to get it is intense.  The novel is a bit episodic, but each episode is interesting with something unique to offer.

And it’s almost outrageous how many classic story arcs Le Guin piles on in the narrative.  We have a coming of age (or coming into manhood) story.  We have the journey home.  We have the capital-Q-Quest.  We have the savior narrative.  Any one of those can serve as the spine for a narrative, but here we find them all layered on top of one another—and surprisingly, the story is the better for it.

I think one of the things that I love about the novel—the thing that raises it beyond issues of masculinity and white-saviordom—is the pervading sense of melancholy that lingers at the edges.  There is a sorrow at the center of Rocannon and all he does that lends a sweetness to the story.  In many ways, it’s a story of loss, the loss of home, the loss of one’s people, the loss of innocence.  Rocannon stops the “bad guys,” but his heroism is one of sacrifice, and he never relishes anything that has to be done.  He is a reluctant hero without any of the handwringing that makes such heroes intolerable.  It’s a fine line to walk, but in my eyes, Le Guin walks it deftly and gracefully.

As an endnote, if you have an edition with Le Guin’s own introduction to the novel (our copy has the introduction as an appendix), I highly recommend reading it.  Le Guin is very smart in thinking and writing about what she has created, and the introduction, while short, is funny and enjoyable.