Review: I don’t know if it is just me but when I am reading a series I grow to like them more and more with every next book. I’m not sure if the author is getting better or the stories, if I am just more familiar with the style and the story but it has been true for almost every series I read (where I managed to go past the second book). The Word for World is Forest by Ursula Le Guin, the fifth book in the series, is living proof of tha...

Review: I think the Hainish Cycle is growing on me. After I got rid of the initial expectations of what a Sci-Fi from the ’70s should be like I actually started enjoying myself. And The Left Hand of Darkness was the peak of the series. The longest so far, I found The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin to be a fantastic tale of a man that is thrown amid different cultures and struggles to understand them and to be understood. I lov...

Review: Well! Here we are already on the third book of the series and finally I am excited. City of Illusions is, no doubt, the most suspenseful and well-planned book by Ursula Le Guin (in my humble opinion). I was getting kind of scared that I would be utterly disappointed by the Hainish cycle but I can see hope at the end of the tunnel. In City of Illusions we move back to Earth, hundreds of years in the future, where people, our people, ...

Review: I started Planet of Exile by Ursula Le Guin convinced I wouldn’t like it. After all, the previous book was a great disappointment for me. Funny enough, I was surprised. The Hainish Cycle is a series of short novels connected only by the author’s name and a few distant connections between characters and places. So essentially you don’t have to read the other books to understand this one. From one side this is awesome since ever...

Review:     It's been a long time since I've read any Sci-Fi books so I feel a bit rusty in commenting. When I went through Ender's Game and Speaker of the Death I was so hyped that I couldn't put them down. It was strange, the jargon took some getting used to but still, it was super entertaining. Things were a bit different with Rocannon's World by Ursula Le Guin.     Despite being written in two different genres, this book and the Earthsea...

Review: I don’t know why but all book or series endings leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Maybe I hate endings, or maybe I don’t like how the author decided to end their story — either way, I am never happy to read the last page. The Other Wind, the sixth book of the Earthsea cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, and so far the last one confirmed, was not what I expected as a conclusion of the story. It started promising with a bit of my...

Review: Tales From Earthsea is a collection of short stories from the world of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin that take place before, during and after the events in the original storyline. It consists of five short stories – The Finder, Darkrose and Diamond, The bones of the Earth, On the High March and Dragonfly. Personally, I am not a big fan of short stories. I simply do not believe they are able to convey a full, meaningful plot and allow ...

Review: It’s amazing how fast I am going through books these days. I’m not sure if it is this specific series that make it so easy or I am just in my element 😀 Tehanu, the fourth book of the Earthsea cycle by Ursula Le Guin, is the last book of the original series. As such I expected it all to tie neatly together with a bow on top. I do love stories which give us more answers than questions at the end. And in a way, Tehanu did fee...

Review: As you can see, I am still going strong with the Ursula Le Guin‘s wave and I even think I’ll be able to finish all her works (that I have) in no time. I did notice, however, that the more I read the more I realize that just good prose is not enough. When I started with the first two books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, I thought that their plot would be connected in some way. It turns out that the only connection so fa...

Review: As I expected, I dipped my toes in the pool of fantasy and now there is no power on earth to get me out of the water 😀 I’ve missed the intricate world-building and the wizards and powerful darkness lurking in the shadows. The Tombs of Atuan is the second book of Earthsea cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin and my favorite so far. It has the same melodic prose that was present in the first one, it has the taste of magic and secre...