The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“The Dispossessed” left with me a voracious appetite for all things Le Guin and renewed my interest in science fiction in general. This book satisfied the hunger at the same time whetting the appetite just a bit more. Paradoxical? I’ll let the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau answer for me from his honoured and ancient grave: “I’d rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices!” Thank you Goodreads for helping us learn useful(?) quotes.
A lot of people say this book is like Avatar or Pocahontas and that they’ve read this noble savage story before. They’re only superficially right: the nobility of the savages and the Terrans’ barbarism do often lean closer to the stereotypical, I admit. However, the politics are much more believable and down-to-earth, the ending is surprising and a punch-in-the-gut in its almost cynical approach and the love story doesn’t involve two characters; it rather emerges between the reader and the beauty of the Other, the mystery of this foresty world which represents everything Terrans (that is us) lost thousands, if not tens of thousands of years ago.
It’s a very short read, therefore it doesn’t allow itself to go as deep as I would have liked it to into the lives and culture of the Athsheans, who I’m ashamed I had to constantly stop myself thinking of as Ewoks.
All in all, The Word For World Is Forest is as close to Avatar as The Shawshank Redemption is to Prison Break. Make no mistake: this is nothing less than science fiction at its best. I truly hope the rest of her books can keep the bar this high.