[Originally: https://wmconnolley.livejournal.com/31420.html]Summary: post-apocalyptic, quest, mystery. Elegiac, a quality I greatly value. Its not up with The Deep; but nothing is.
Read again? I first read this in my teenage years, when I read all the sci fi available in our local library. I've read it several times since. I'll read it again. 2025/05: and I hve just read it again, and tarteed up this review.
Memorable line: "people makes laws for what they are most afraid of"1. And perhaps: "travel alone". If you want the plot, the the wiki entry is good enough. That also told me one new thing (no, two; oh hold on, I'll come in again...), with which I agree: that the Shing aren't really convincing villains when they turn up. They are almost convincing; what works rather well is that it becomes clear that although the Shing have conquered the Earth, they don't really know why they bothered to do it, they have no purpose. But when they speak they are wrong. The other thing is that this predates The Left Hand of Darkness in the "Hainish cycle". Like some of her other books, and many another author, Leguin (in the beginning) tries to sketch a future semi-utopia: its a small world, but the people are at peace with nature and stable. This is, I think, what she really wants (see "Always coming home"). But its not stable, and her character Falk sets out to find out why.
2025/05: I enjoyed the re-read. It is well written, and a good story.
Notes
1. On the 2025 re-read I found the passage I was looking for: "Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do.... Fearing their own profound attraction towards death, they preached Reverence for Life, fooling them-selves at last with their own lie."
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