"The Word for World is Forest" Angry, Heavy-Handed, but Still Good
This is by far, the angriest book I have ever seen from Ursula K. Le Guin, and it kind of works. Don't get me wrong, the Vietnam War allegory is very, very thick. Like almost hilariously so. I'm not even an expert on the Vietnam war, but the "very definitely human" shorter species who live exclusively in forests and fight back using guerilla-style warfare is very on the nose. Yet I still liked it? It felt decidedly significantly less sci-fi than other Usrula K. Le Guin novels, and honestly could have simply been in separate continuity and very little would have changed. Let's talk about it. Let me get this out of the way very quickly. The noble savage trope is very much well and alive with the Athsheans, there's no other way to cut it. Their people view Terrans as these backwards creatures, who are oddly hairless, and have no strong connection to the Earth. They have this "mystical" way of dreaming that is so foreign to humans that even th...