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. 

Ancillary Mercy Me

*Spoilers aplenty ahead*

It is impossible for me to review Ancillary Mercy without reviewing the whole of the Imperial Radch Trilogy.  The first book in a trilogy exists on its own as well as launching a series.  The writer can have all kinds of things planned, but since the first book as to sell well in order for that series to launch at all, it has to be able to stand on its own.  The second book is a midpoint, and I found it hard to judge, since its merits depend almost entirely on where the series as a whole is headed.  The third book, while still a thing unto itself, brings the whole of the author’s goals into focus, and exists almost solely in relation to the two books that precede it.

So where does Ancillary Mercy take us?  Going into the novel, I had a set of expectations, or at least a set of possibilities.  I expected a major confrontation with at least one of the Anaander Mianaais, and felt there would probably be several of her.  I expected the introduction of the Presger and possibly a confrontation.  I expected Seivarden to play an important role, since it felt like she had been a major and continuing plot point without a purpose; possibly what happened on her ship a thousand years ago would prove to be important.  I expected Breq’s arc to go . . . somewhere; I didn’t know if she’d find love or happiness or death, but I knew her story would have to reach some kind of inevitable and hopefully surprising ending.  I expected her song collection to play some pivotal role.

Yeah, I was wrong about most everything.  We did get a confrontation with Anaander Mianaai, but she wasn’t the rich and enjoyable villain she had been in the previous books.  This Anaander was a desperate and angry Anaander, lacking the class and calm of the other.  The Presger never appeared, only their translator Zeiat.  Seivarden has a regular appearance, but no ghosts from her past revealed themselves; Breq did have an arc, but not in any definitive way; the song collection continued to be present but didn’t play a critical part in the plot.

While reading the novel, I continually felt disappointment as my expectations weren’t met, but I withheld final judgment because who knew where things would go in the final 50 pages.  Then, once the secrets from those final pages were harvested, I continued to feel disappointed, but I was immediately aware that I felt that way because the book didn’t follow predictable paths, and I knew that the author was smart enough to know that that was what she was doing, that that was what she intended to do.  The book purposefully rejects traditionally masculine story arcs and conflicts in favor of a different kind of story, and you need to meet the novel on its own terms to enjoy it for what it does.

In the end, the trilogy is about the ways we understand and communicate with each other.  It’s about how one person can make huge changes by making the small changes she can when she can.  It’s about progressively (and slowly and determinedly) rebuilding a world founded on deep injustice to make it more just, more loving, more respectful, and better.  Just as Justice of Toren collected one song at a time, but over three thousand years ended up with a vast knowledge, Breq collects one broken soul after another and nurtures them into independence, strength, and self-determination.  She begins with Seivarden and her kef addiction.  From that one changed life, she finds herself in charge of a single ship and the lives under her command.  In the second book she saves Tisarwat and Queter and establishes trust among many others, so that in the third book, she is saving an entire station full of people and getting AIs their freedom.  Her ambitions are never grand, and for all her wisdom and planning, none of this progress is part of some master plan.  She puts one foot in front of another and fixes what she can.  She doesn’t set out to free all the Valskayaans, and says as much to Queter, but because of the little things she does, the laborers on Athoek own their own work by the end of the third novel.

Anaander is given short shrift because this isn’t Anaander’s story.  Mianaai is an abuser, and Leckie does not attempt to humanize and explain away those abuses.  Leckie’s story is about the oppressed and trammeled upon, their perseverance and their fight.  Anaander has a bunch of power—until station says no.  Mianaai can’t be a big threat because her strength is built up entirely on the bodies and minds of others.  When those bodies and minds reject her, she is nothing but a desperate and pathetic figure, which is exactly what Leckie wants to show.

It really is a neat and unusual trilogy, and Leckie is a solid writer if not particularly poetic or insightful at the sentence-level.  The individual bricks might be merely above average, but the edifice she constructs from those bricks is a thing of beauty and great insight.  I’ll be very interested to see what kinds of stories she tell when she leaves this universe.  For now, though, I’m impressed and a fan.