Rocannon's World by Ursula K. Le Guin

Rocannon's World, published in 1966, is Le Guin's first published novel and part of the Hainish Cycle. It follows Gavarel Rocannon, an ethnologist from the League of All Worlds, whose survey of an almost uncontacted planet is interrupted when his ship is destroyed, killing his colleagues. Adventures ensue as he journeys across the planet accompanied by a group of natives.

The low-technology world, the feudal society, and the many different races give the book a fantasy feeling, but it is also undoubtedly science fiction. It's a unique fusion that I do really like, and feels very like Le Guin. The world is rich, but subtly, and the themes explored are, I think, favourites of Le Guin: class, companionship, isolation, duty, telepathy, etc. As a bonus, it's the novel in which Le Guin coined the term "ansible" to mean a faster-than-light communicator.

The mention of a shadowy death following one of the characters felt very familiar. I think it's probably a mix of the gebbeth in A Wizard of Earthsea and the deaths in The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. Though I still can't shake the feeling that there's another book I've read with that kind of idea in it.

Rocannon's world might not as brilliant as some of the other Le Guin novels that I've read, but that's to be expected considering that she also wrote A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. All in all I give it a big thumbs up.

On a related note

I feel like Iain M. Banks must have taken inspiration from the Hainish Cycle for his Culture series, in that he builds a universe through stories set on the edge of it and spread over vast periods of time. And now that I think about it, Inversions bears at least a passing resemblance to Rocannon's World.

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Callum Brown, 2021-01-19

Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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