Paperback, 277 pages
English language
Published July 9, 1976 by Bantam Doubleday Dell.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of short stories by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, named after a line from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and first published by Harper & Row in 1975. Described by Le Guin as a retrospective, it collects 17 previously published stories, four of which were the germ of novels she was to write later: "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" gave Le Guin the place that was to become Earthsea; "Semley's Necklace" was first published as "Dowry of the Angyar" in 1964 and then as the Prologue of the novel Rocannon's World in 1966; "Winter's King" is about the inhabitants of the planet Winter, as is Le Guin's later novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Most of the other stories are also connected to Le Guin's novels. The story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" won the …
The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of short stories by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, named after a line from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and first published by Harper & Row in 1975. Described by Le Guin as a retrospective, it collects 17 previously published stories, four of which were the germ of novels she was to write later: "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" gave Le Guin the place that was to become Earthsea; "Semley's Necklace" was first published as "Dowry of the Angyar" in 1964 and then as the Prologue of the novel Rocannon's World in 1966; "Winter's King" is about the inhabitants of the planet Winter, as is Le Guin's later novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Most of the other stories are also connected to Le Guin's novels. The story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" won the Hugo Award in 1974, while "The Day Before the Revolution" won the Locus and Nebula Awards in 1975.
A first retrospective collection at 10 years, her notes before each story are sharp and advancing even for otherwise tangent tales. And then it ends fiercely with the kicks of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and "The Day Before The Revolution".
I tried because I like her writing, which remains excellent, but in spite of comparisons with LOTR which I did like, my usual lack of interest in fantasy prevailed.
But don't let me put you off if you like wizards and that.
I struggled a bit with some of the stories and the short format, some of them where amazing, a very different type of Sci-Fi.
