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A review by samwreads
Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
3.0
I read this a few months ago so I'll keep my thoughts short since many details are lost to memory.
Overall this is a hard book to judge. In many ways it's amazing and the best of the trilogy. But in the end it's long and wandering and a bit harder to finish than its predecessors.
All of the books in the trilogy are empathetic and heartfelt, but this one is even more so. There's a central question of "what is a family" or "where do I belong" which is explored even as the main character explores the world. There are simple and more complex cruelties, both personal and structural, which bear upon the fictional world. Often these are perpetrated by or to the families and ties that form (and often break). I might think of the tribulations as a mix between a Margaret Atwood childhood and Arendt-ian force, although that's doing a disservice to the wide panoply of different people, groups and cultures that LeGuin imagines here. Throughout, the empathy and maturity of the narrative voice are far beyond what one might normally expect from a young adult novel. A bit like Tehanu did with the Earthsea series, this book might assume some development of its younger readers since the earlier novels. Or if that's not the case, maybe it encourages them along that path through the story. That is not to say it is normative, but rather that it is emotionally challenging, and how one responds to that challenge may determine how much one appreciates the novel.
So why three stars? It's honestly probably more like 3.5. I liked it more than "Gifts" but a bit less than "Voices." The cruelties and evil can be a bit much, and there's less narrative drive to the story. For a book of its length, this did make it much more challenging to finish than the first two. But for all of that it's a powerful and rewarding read for those willing to put in the effort.
Overall this is a hard book to judge. In many ways it's amazing and the best of the trilogy. But in the end it's long and wandering and a bit harder to finish than its predecessors.
All of the books in the trilogy are empathetic and heartfelt, but this one is even more so. There's a central question of "what is a family" or "where do I belong" which is explored even as the main character explores the world. There are simple and more complex cruelties, both personal and structural, which bear upon the fictional world. Often these are perpetrated by or to the families and ties that form (and often break). I might think of the tribulations as a mix between a Margaret Atwood childhood and Arendt-ian force, although that's doing a disservice to the wide panoply of different people, groups and cultures that LeGuin imagines here. Throughout, the empathy and maturity of the narrative voice are far beyond what one might normally expect from a young adult novel. A bit like Tehanu did with the Earthsea series, this book might assume some development of its younger readers since the earlier novels. Or if that's not the case, maybe it encourages them along that path through the story. That is not to say it is normative, but rather that it is emotionally challenging, and how one responds to that challenge may determine how much one appreciates the novel.
So why three stars? It's honestly probably more like 3.5. I liked it more than "Gifts" but a bit less than "Voices." The cruelties and evil can be a bit much, and there's less narrative drive to the story. For a book of its length, this did make it much more challenging to finish than the first two. But for all of that it's a powerful and rewarding read for those willing to put in the effort.