Reviews and Comments

My general impression of this work is that it's mainly impressive as someone's first published book. It has a lot of parts of it which are extremely rough around the edges and detract from the reading experience, but what's here is good enough that I hope to read later works by this author once they have developed a bit more.

What's bad about this book is that the narrative is fairly confusing, the art on some pages adds to that, it seems really to be trying too hard to subvert expectations, and it's a little too short so the ending doesn't feel entirely earned.

What's good about this book is that the art makes a big impact on "set piece" pages, there is a complex world set up here which appears to have many allegorical implications for our own world, and choosing to have the main character be the griot rather than the prince is more interesting than the typical fare involving princes.

I last read this book something like twenty years ago. I thought it was a good book, not a great book, but it did stick with me. My book club selected this as our read for August... I was a little disappointed because I wanted to read something new for me. Well, turns out I got quite a lot more out of reading this the second time... and I'm now convinced that it's Le Guin's best book.

This book kind of gets flattened to being about gender in popular discourse and it is about gender... but it's also about politics and trust and survival. It's also about how gender impacts all of those things... Gender as a material condition.

I also feel that it's the case that all of the parts of this book come together very well. The asides into folk tales strengthen the illusion of the world Le Guin has built.

The TLDR: I read this book for my book club, and it's not a book I normally would have read and it is a book I would find difficult to recommend, but I am glad to have read it.

The hook of this book is essentially a kind of year 2000 edge-lord humor. I'm not interested in that aspect, which regrettably suffuses the entire book. As such, the narrator is of course some kind of deranged pedophile.

However, underneath the pitch of the book is an interesting commentary on our modern society--what is it to so heavily identify with a brand? What does it mean to exist in this space where all public spaces are now privately owned, but all of our private thoughts are now transmitted publicly (regardless of if others want them)? What does it mean for us if everything is sufficient, and nothing aspires to be more or less than that?

To borrow a phrase from Wenderoth... the book itself is an insufficient meal, and nothing tastes as sweet.

For me, it does not really manage to be worth reading in of itself... More or less, what kept me interested in this book was experiencing it as an artifact of its time rather than enjoying it for its own qualities.

In terms of it's own qualities, it starts strong but gradually loses its way as it goes on. You could probably divide the book into 3 "arcs" where the first arc is a 4 star work, the 2nd arc is a 0 star work, and the final arc is a 2 star work. I think most reviews are probably based on the strength of the first arc which has an insane creative energy. Once the first arc wraps, it's clear the book needs to get to a specific ending and it just kind of meanders there in a dull and repetitive way.

Another interesting aspect of this piece is to compare it with cultural artifacts from our own time! In this comparison, somehow both works end up looking bad. Disney/Marvel studios removed a lot of the surreal charm contained within this book creating a more sterile product. On the other hand, Disney's version of the infinity stones saga clearly works better from a dramatic angle and doesn't bombard the viewer with constant exposition (at least to this extent)

I'm mixed on this book.

Let's start with the good: this book does, imo, does what a scifi book should do. It placed all kinds of questions in my mind. My favorite sequence is one where Sam, a sham Buddha, leads another person to true enlightenment somewhat unintentionally. This is such an interesting idea! Sam himself is really interesting in all kinds of ways.

The bad for this book is more or less that it contains a bit of the kind of unthinking transphobia which you might expect from the 60s. Given the current climate where people are attacking power stations to disrupt drag shows, I don't think the book can be recommended in spite of this. Another weakness for the book is that it retains a "religious" kind of feel for the prose. I can understand why this decision was made, but it prevented me from ever being truly immersed in the story.