A tiny bite of the early Hainish cycle. It's easy to see why it was eclipsed by The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's still an interesting read. ( )

Much better paced, but the point of view swapping was a little confusing early on. Definitely required a little bit of trust in Le Guin to pull it together, and she did. I like that her treatment of the Other is really starting to shine through in a thoughtful way in this one. I will admit I wanted Rolery to be a more interesting character than she was, more beyond basically a blonde Pocahontas. Overall, though, it's well done, the science fiction aspect is neat, and I do get the sense here of a much bigger story than we're seeing (with the War and what's actually happened).
( )

paperback

La colonia terrestre de la Liga Planetaria instalada durante seiscientos años en el distante planeta Eltanin, está al borde de la extinción debido a las duras condiciones de vida del planeta y a una amenaza inesperada. Tienen como vecinos a los tevaranos, un grupo de nómadas primitivos muy similares genéticamente a los humanos. Estos, aunque temen a los terrestres, se instalan en las cercanías de la colonia durante los crueles inviernos que duran quince años.
Pero este invierno que se avecina, las hordas bárbaras del norte se acercan a la colonia, y si los terrestres no se unen a los nómadas, superando seis siglos de desconfianzas, éste puede ser el último invierno para todos ellos.

Though this is my least favorite of Le Guin's first three Hainish novels (often bundled together, as in the Worlds of Exile and Illusion), on this re-read I really found a lot to appreciate and be intrigued by. Especially Wold! Honestly I think this whole story could have been interesting just from Wold's perspective.

Like Rocannon's World, Le Guin explores her themes and ideas in the background of, and entwined with, a more action-oriented foregrounded plot. In Rocannon's World it was a quest, in Planet of Exile it's a siege. Once again I found the main plot compelling enough, but it's the worldbuilding that really interests me.

Here worldbuilding means the seasons-- for Werel, each season is around 15 earth years long, so a full year is the length of a lifetime. The length of the Werellian year informs not just environment of the world, but its cultures and customs, each person living on it, and the plot of the novel itself, in a way that ties everything together intimately, foundationally, and symbolically. Honestly, George R R Martin could never. One of the ways in which this theme is expressed that I found most interesting is in the stark differences in how cultural memory functions in each of the novel's two main groups-- the semi-migratory Tevarans who rely on their elders' memories and stories, and the record-keeping alien Alterrans whose ancestors are from earth, and how these differences make them mistrust and misunderstand each other.

Unfortunately, one way in which I think Le Guin definitely missed a trick is by having Jakob Agat be older than Rolery-- not just because that's such a tired situation in literature, but because much of Rolery's relationship to her community is defined by being born unusually "out of season" in the summer fallow. She has no equals in age among the spring adults and autumn children of her people, and having Jakob be the same age as her would help to explain why she is so attracted to him as a companion-- an equal, a contemporary. Conversely, and this I think is explored by the book, Jakob is attracted to Rolery because of her quietness and strangeness and loneliness, the way she turns her face away from him while all others in his life look intimately towards him, even into his mind. What an interesting relationship! She is a human who feels out of place in her community, he an alien who is of a necessity deeply attached and overwhelmed by his own. Ah well, most of that is still there anyway. I'll just ignore the few references to his real age and think of them as the same.

The audiobook narrators were good, but I found it kind of silly that they had one person for for the Jakob Agat and Wold sections and one for the Rolery sections-- it made it clear that they cast a "woman reader" and a "man reader" which doesn't make much thematic sense for the story. Any of the following make much more sense to me: two narrators but split Tevaran/Alterran (one does Rolery and Wold and the other Jakob Agat), three narrators (one for each perspective character), or just one narrator for the whole novel (honestly I think Carrington MacDuffie would have been great all on her own). ( )