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A set of loosely-connected stories set in the final years of a color-based enslaving society, the war for liberation, and the messy aftermath.

It’s brutal at times, but not as gut-wrenching as The Word for World is Forest, in large part because the viewpoint characters aren’t the ones carrying out the atrocities, and in some cases are relating them years later. The characters are also given space to exist beyond the immediate situation.

It’s not an exact analog of the United States before, during and after our civil war, but it’s clearly our own history and present that Le Guin is critiquing: plantations, color-based slavery (with corresponding prejudices), the struggle for women’s rights following the struggle for freedom, backlashes, and the ongoing struggle to really clean up the oppression and expand civil rights. All with the colors reversed to drive the point home for white readers.

(Cross-posted from my website.)

A horror story about a '70s UK folk band, a pretty amazing era and environment for folk and music in general. Hand made the truly inspired choice to tell the entire story in the form of interviews with the band members, decades after the events of the book, which I'm guessing was inspired by her background in music journalism. It also adds to the realism of this being one of those half-apocryphal, half-confirmed fact music legend stories, and I wonder if it was also inspired by one - specifically the mysterious disappearance of Licorice McKechnie, who sang for The Incredible String Band. Not only is this a great update to the epistolary genre, I also feel it should really play into the current true crime/horror podcast genre that often uses similar story telling devices.

Apart from that though, I found the story a bit mediocre. It's a spooky, very slow-burn about a haunted house, that just didn't really get the escalation to truly creep me out. I like this stuff in film, where cinematography, music etc. can make it all a little bit more effective, but in books I need some more intense horror to get me to shiver. (Apart from, I suppose, true masters of the genre like Shirley Jackson. But her novels I read just as much for her beautiful prose as for the horror.) On top of that, what happens in the house and what could cause it never becomes clear to me. Of course, you want there to be ambiguity in these types of stories, but if you leave to many things unanswered, I think things feel lackluster and you actually miss out on opportunities for scares of the "sinking realization" variety. It's a difficult balance, and there's also just the possibility that I'm stupid and missed out on some clues. I'm sure Wylding Hall struck the right notes (ha!) for some people, but not for me.

So. Storytime. In my country, children are separated into different high schools at twelve years old, based on academical aptitude. At the highest level, there are two types of school, gymnasium and atheneum, with the only difference being that at a gymnasium they also teach Greek and Latin. That's the one I went to (not bragging, I was a very mediocre student). As you might imagine, the type of twelve-year old that chooses to go to a gymnasium usually isn't just smart, but also very driven to prove themselves academically. Many of us staked a lot of our self-esteem on our intelligence, especially if we didn't have a lot else going on, like also being athletic or socially gifted. We were all kind of used to being the smartest kid in the room, and then suddenly we weren't. Worse, there were always a couple of stand out, near genius level students who were really only in that school because there wasn't anywhere higher for them to go to. So, what you get, is an entire school full of teenagers all simultaneously realising that the one trait they thought gave them value isn't actually all that special, while also dealing with the hormonal hell that is puberty.

Basically, what I'm saying is, I knew a lot of Quentins. Quite frankly, I was Quentin at times. I related very heavily to his character and really empathized with his struggles. Not because I thought his self-absorption, entitlement and disgust with mundanity were justified, but because I so deeply understood the insecurities those traits all stemmed from. I've been there, man.

And then I went online and found out that many readers absolutely hated his character and his personality ruined the books for them.

Well.

Always good to get an outside perspective.

But yeah, I really loved this book. Most of the characters are all kind of assholes with few redeeming traits (they get better in the sequels!) and magic isn't the fun escapism it usually is. It's an excellent deconstruction of both the worlds Hogwarts and Narnia present, which I honestly think is worthwhile for all fantasy fans to kind of ruminate on. Why do we so badly want to be whisked away to a school for special people with special powers that they very pointedly do not share with the rest of the world? Why do we want to live in a parallel world where we get to be kings and queens, and close personal friends with Jesus? We're not bad people for having these fantasies of being special and amazing, they're pretty much universal. But they're also something you need to let go of at a certain point in order to be happy as what you most likely are; an ordinary person with just as much of a right to rule a kingdom as anyone else. Taken as a whole, the series is a manifesto on the necessity of finding value in the life that exists when the adventure is over, to be happy with stability and mundanity, because nothing is so special you don't ultimately get used to it, and you can't find life satisfaction in continuing to chase the next big thrill. Satisfaction is not about getting everything you ever wanted, but about how to stop wanting when you have enough, which is what takes so long for Quentin to fully understand.

Expect only questions, no answers from this book.

Have you ever read one of those stories where after the apocalypse, or maybe on an uninhabited island, one person is left, seemingly the only person left alive at all? And the whole story arc is about them dealing with loneliness and trying to find another human? Usually they do, usually one of the opposite sex, the implication being that they'll procreate, thereby solving the loneliness problem for at least two generations. Have you ever thought about that second generation? The siblings who will either have to resort to incest or dying out one by one? I often did. I wondered what it would be like for the last sibling, truly the last person on earth now.

I Who Have Never Known Men is about that last person, an account of her life, and it's as bleak as you would expect it to be. Everywhere this is grouped as a feminist novel, which I think is a bit shallow. Sure, the topic of gender comes up, and all the characters are women, but it's one of those stories were if the genders were flipped, if it was about a sole male surviving the apocalypse, no one would see that as a statement on gender. Really, in my opinion, it's about the meaning of life, and how much would be left of it without the rest of humanity. What use are the women's attempts at rebuilding a semblance of their previous lives, at finding out why what happened to them happened to them, at passing down knowledge to the one child among them, if there are no other people to share it with, no next generation to pass it down to? The pointlessness is soul-sucking. And it never abates.

It takes a special kind of person to enjoy a book like this, but if you like bleak, questioning, open-ended narratives, with the grace to be short reads, you should definitely give this one a try.