Voices.

Le Guin, Ursula K. (author).

Le Guin’s new book pairs organically with its companion novel Gifts (2004), echoing themes of revenge, family legacies, personal morality, and a humanistic magic redolent more of earthy mysteries than flashy sorcery. Seventeen-year-old Memer, a “siege brat” resentful of the invaders who raped her mother and left her hometown “a broken city of ruins, hunger, and fear,” dreams of one day delivering vengeance. Then Orrec and Gry arrive—the same teens who fled the Uplands in Gifts, now worldly, grown up, and, in Orrec’s case, renowned as a Maker of stories. Orrec’s tale spinning begins to erode the boundaries between the conquered and the conquerors, confronting Memer with decisions that temper her childhood dogmatism and press her to a deeper understanding of her mystical birthright. Readers who look to fantasy for traditional epic quests may consider this novel too contained, but the relevance of the slowly festering conflict between occupying and occupied cultures cannot be missed, and the author’s understated writing flows as unstintingly as ever. One final note: the photo-collage jacket portrait of a dark-skinned girl is to be applauded, celebrating the diversity long present in Le Guin’s fantasy but too infrequently evident on the covers of her books.