I've always loved The Left Hand of Darkness. I can see why the Shing were quietly written out of the Hainish continuity. City of Illusions starts strong, with a trek across a dangerous landscape combined with a coming of age- putting those two things together is arguably what she's best at- but once action moves to the eponymous city, I find everything gets dull fast and there's a little too much psychobabble. Le Guin never really makes one care about the invaders on this distant colony world. Planet of Exile seems to me to be doing something interesting in pairing a war narrative with a more female-focused one, and indeed, its co-lead is the only female protagonist of a Hainish book (there are some in the short fiction) until 1995! But to be honest, I find it boring.
But I find the end unsatisfying on a number of levels. There's some beautiful writing, especially in the prologue, where Le Guin cleverly retells an ancient myth in the trappings of sf so well you could be convinced the myth was meant to be about space travel to begin with! Rocannon is a thoughtful protagonist, one of many in the Hainish stories. Semley goes from her society to a more advanced one on her own planet, and then to the stars Rocannon comes from the stars to a "primitive" planet and then treks across it, encountering a number of different societies. It's a good exploration of something Le Guin was handle a lot in her writing, encounters between different cultures and worldviews. I've seen some reviewers say each book is better than the one before it, but I disagree: I find Rocannon's World the most interesting. It's Le Guin, so they're deeper than they need to be, but what she would accomplish later is largely nascent here. Together they make up what I see as the first phase of Hainish stories, all action-adventure stories about war.
That makes me glad I read them in chronological order before, actually, because they are a rough beginning. These three novels were the first Hainish stories written, but a couple slot in earlier chronologically. Rocannon's World / Planet of Exile / City of Illusions So I was coming at this material from a slightly different angle than before, with older eyes.
Before launching into this (the first of a two-volume set), I had read all six of the Hainish books but none of the short fiction my original read (back in 2005-07) was in internal chronological order, but I did this one in publication order (more on that in a future post). It's one of two from Library of America, and it collects all of what I would call her "phase one" Hainish stories (1964-67), and about half of her second phase (1969-74), along with one short story from the third phase (1990-2000). This beefy tome collects about half of Ursula Le Guin's so-called "Hainish cycle," less a series and more a setting that she set most, but not all, of her space-based sf in.
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