A review by arthurbdd
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2: The Word for World Is Forest / Five Ways to Forgiveness / The Telling / Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
5.0
Aside from the incendiary The Word For World Is Forest and a few of the short stories in here, the bulk of the material in this collection hails from Le Guin's revisiting of the Hainish setting in the 1990s as part of her more general reassessment of her early works (she'd go back to Earthsea at around the same time too).
In consequence it is, perhaps, not as groundbreaking as the material collected in the first volume of this collection, but equally this is a gorgeous presentation of the material, brings together the five parts of the Werel/Yeowe story-cycle at last, and in finds Le Guin continuing to find new things to do in the Hainish setting.
The cycle concludes with Five Ways To Forgiveness, one of the most emotionally visceral works Le Guin has ever devised, and The Telling, one of her most calm and detached, showing the impressive range of tones and atmospheres she could muster at this stage of her career. After this she would be done with the setting, but between this and the first volume, what more could we possibly ask for?
In consequence it is, perhaps, not as groundbreaking as the material collected in the first volume of this collection, but equally this is a gorgeous presentation of the material, brings together the five parts of the Werel/Yeowe story-cycle at last, and in finds Le Guin continuing to find new things to do in the Hainish setting.
The cycle concludes with Five Ways To Forgiveness, one of the most emotionally visceral works Le Guin has ever devised, and The Telling, one of her most calm and detached, showing the impressive range of tones and atmospheres she could muster at this stage of her career. After this she would be done with the setting, but between this and the first volume, what more could we possibly ask for?