Who doesn't love Ursula K. Le Guin???

Ursula K. Le Guin - Powers YA LEG

In many circles Ursula K. Le Guin is known mainly for things she wrote in the 60s and 70s. In SciFi circle for The Left Hand of Darkness or The Lathe of Heaven, in radical circles for the Dispossessed, her ambiguous anarchist utopia, and in YA circles for the Chronicles of Earth Sea. I agree that these are all excellent books, but Le Guin has been writing for more than 40 years and has published SciFi, Fantasy, non-scifi/fantasy fiction (ie literature if you are among those who can't consider 'genre fiction' literature), poetry, essays, ya and kids books. You are simply missing out if you read the Left Hand of Darkness, like it, but stop there.

Powers is the third book in the Annals of the Western Shore. I liked Gifts, first book and loved Voices. Powers is every bit as good as Voices, perhaps even better. Hopefully Le Guin keeps going with this series because it seems like they would only get better and better. The Annals of the Western Shore are pretty much stand alone books set in different parts of the same continent, although there is a thread that ties them together, so it would be better (although not essential) to read them in order. Powers follows the life of a slave named Gavir who is being educated to become the teacher in one of the nobel house of Etra. He eventually escapes and wanders around eventually finding himself in a rebel free city of escaped slaves, not entirely unreminisent of real life communities of escaped slaves like maroon communities in Jamaica, and Quilombos in Brazil. I won't give too much of the plot away, but merely comment that Le Guin manages the difficult task of writing a book that is appropriate for even young YA readers that also doesn't gloss over the horrors of slavery. Without being needlessly traumatising, she crafts a tale that has a lot of emotional resonance that gets beneath the superficial and asks some pretty tough questions. Very evident throughout this series is LeGuins love of words, of books, poetry and learning. Libraries play an important role in the second and third books, and poetry and ballads in all three. So if that sounds good to you like it does to me, read these books!

Some other Ursula K. LeGuin books:
Angelica Gorodischer(Ursula K. LeGuin translator)- Kalpa imperial : the greatest empire that never was SCIENCE FICTION GOR
The birthday of the world and other stories SCIENCE FICTION LEG
A fisherman of the inland sea SCIENCE FICTION LEG
The Dispossessed SCIENCE FICTION LEG

Ursula K. Le Guin's website is worth checking out too. Here.