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Powers (Annals of the Western Shore #03)
Ursula K. Le Guin

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Shoshana, September 16, 2007

The third in the Annals of the Western Shore series following Gifts and Voices. These are ostensibly young adult novels, though Le Guin's work seems to get this label whenever the protagonist is a child or adolescent, regardless of the themes or sophistication of the narrative.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Le Guin read from Powers at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing. Before reading the first seven pages, she compared the book to "a jointless chicken" or "baby back ribs" because it lacks structural points that make it easy to start and stop an excerpt. This jointlessness is characteristic of Le Guin's more recent work, which has a deceptive simplicity and clarity of language and story. (She also remarked that she has stories but is not sure that she has plots.) Le Guin's writing often embodies or evokes the Tao (see her translation and commentary). It is subtly complex yet straightforward.

Like the protagonists of the previous books in the series, Gavir has a secret gift--in his case, he remembers events that have not yet happened. The action is somewhat picaresque, through also psychologically developmental. I was reminded through most of it of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, which it reflects/distorts/revises nicely. I strongly suggest that you read the Heinlein, then the Le Guin, in the same way that you'd pair Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, please, not the film) with Haldeman's The Forever War.

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