Read-a-thon # 2: Voices, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sponsored by 
kore.
The middle book in Ursula K. Le Guin’s loosely connected trilogy “Annals of the Western Shores,” but the last one I read. I liked it the best. It’s better-paced than Powers and has much more vivid characters, and is deeper and way less glum than Gifts. The writing is clear, beautiful, and vivid.
Seventeen-year-old Memer lives in a city once known for its libraries, which has been conquered by people who ban writing for plausible religious reasons. (The word is the breath of God, and it’s blasphemous to trap it on paper.) The invaders destroyed as many books as they could find, but Memer’s house has a secret library. We learn early on that the library has more than cultural significance, but the magical nature of the books - and of Memer - unfolds slowly over the course of the story. Unsurprisingly, given that this is a Le Guin novel, it’s a complicated and many-faceted thing.
In other hands, this story could have easily become a simple and implausible “Books are banned and the government controls writing” dystopia. It’s not, of course. There’s way more going on than books being banned, and the government has motives that go far beyond controlling writing. The interactions of the conquerors and the conquered feel real, and make sense in the context of their convincingly detailed cultures.
Like the other books in the series, this deals with serious political and moral themes, but it does a better job than the other two of also telling a moving human story. Ultimately, it’s not only about the fate of the city or even about Memer growing to accept and claim her own power, but about her relationships with a trio of parent-figures: the Waylord (the keeper of the library and her surrogate father) and two strangers who come to town, a poet and his lion-taming wife. (Orrec and Gry from Gifts, many years later.) Memer both grows up and reclaims relationships she missed out on as a child. I don’t recall ever seeing that particular dynamic play out before in a YA novel, but it’s very moving.
Voices (Annals of the Western Shore)
Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1002227.html. Comment here or there.
kore.
The middle book in Ursula K. Le Guin’s loosely connected trilogy “Annals of the Western Shores,” but the last one I read. I liked it the best. It’s better-paced than Powers and has much more vivid characters, and is deeper and way less glum than Gifts. The writing is clear, beautiful, and vivid.
Seventeen-year-old Memer lives in a city once known for its libraries, which has been conquered by people who ban writing for plausible religious reasons. (The word is the breath of God, and it’s blasphemous to trap it on paper.) The invaders destroyed as many books as they could find, but Memer’s house has a secret library. We learn early on that the library has more than cultural significance, but the magical nature of the books - and of Memer - unfolds slowly over the course of the story. Unsurprisingly, given that this is a Le Guin novel, it’s a complicated and many-faceted thing.
In other hands, this story could have easily become a simple and implausible “Books are banned and the government controls writing” dystopia. It’s not, of course. There’s way more going on than books being banned, and the government has motives that go far beyond controlling writing. The interactions of the conquerors and the conquered feel real, and make sense in the context of their convincingly detailed cultures.
Like the other books in the series, this deals with serious political and moral themes, but it does a better job than the other two of also telling a moving human story. Ultimately, it’s not only about the fate of the city or even about Memer growing to accept and claim her own power, but about her relationships with a trio of parent-figures: the Waylord (the keeper of the library and her surrogate father) and two strangers who come to town, a poet and his lion-taming wife. (Orrec and Gry from Gifts, many years later.) Memer both grows up and reclaims relationships she missed out on as a child. I don’t recall ever seeing that particular dynamic play out before in a YA novel, but it’s very moving.
Voices (Annals of the Western Shore)
Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1002227.html. Comment here or there.