Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Rich Horton
Gavir is a boy who was kidnapped from his home in the Marshes as a tiny baby, and taken to the City State called Etra to be a slave in the House Arcamand. The Father of the House of Arca is a relatively benign slaveowner, and Gavir, along with his sister Sallo, grows up fairly comfortably. Gavir does have a magical talent, apparently unique to people of the Marshes -- he occasionally "remembers" future events. But his sister urges him to conceal these visions.

Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Alma A. Hromic
One can hardly imagine a world which would come closer to Hell than a world in which, as the chilling back-blurb of Voices has it, "...the conquerors [of this city] consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death." Plunging a young heroine into this terrifying milieu, the author uses the passions and fears and the waking wonder of the girl called Memer to shape a story which wakes the wonder in her readers, too -- and in some ways rouses us all to stand up against horror and oppression by seeking out the power and the responsibility of knowledge and understanding.

Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Rich Horton
Memer Galva is a daughter of a prominent family in the city of Ansul. For all of Memer's life, Ansul has been under the domination of the Alds, a harsh desert people. She has grown up with the remnants of a once thriving household including the leader of her family, the Waylord Sulter Galva, who survived the Alds' torture without revealing his house's secrets. The most important of these is a secret room in which are hidden the surviving books of the people of Ansul.

Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Rich Horton
The gifted families are the aristocrats of small, farming-oriented, domains. The gifts seem mostly rather terrifying -- the power to take over another's mind, the power to "undo" something (turn order into Chaos), the power to twist a man's body unnaturally, or to make someone deathly ill. A few gifts are less fearful: calling animals, or moving heavy things. In general, people seem to be struggling -- diminishing in both numbers and in the power of their gifts.

Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer
Orrec and Gry have grown up in the harsh world of the Uplands. Here there is poverty and hardship and a heroic past, where each family has a gift, some terrible, some helpful. Gry can call the animals to her, and Orrec can unmake anything he sets his eyes upon. Both are expected to use their gifts to help their respective families and marry in ways that will keep the family blood, and therefore the gift, which is passed down father-son, mother-daughter, strong.

Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Jayme Lynn Blaschke
When this collection came into his possession, Jayme regarded it with some suspicion. It didn't help that he'd heard from Le Guin fans that this was not a good place to enter the Earthsea series, as newcomers to her fantasy world would probably be lost without knowledge of the previous novels as reference. But he had read some of Le Guin's shorter works in the intervening years, and found them not half bad. So he was determined to give the book a thorough reading.

The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Donna McMahon
Sutty, an Earth woman, comes to the planet Aka as an Ekumen envoy, researching Akan history and culture. Before leaving Earth she learned the ancient Akan language, but she arrives to discover that in the 60 light years her journey took, the planet has been transformed. A monolithic new government has outlawed all old customs and beliefs, including the old language, and all old books have been zealously hunted down and destroyed.

The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
This novel takes Earthsea's story forward. As it begins, Alder, a sorcerer of modest ability, comes seeking Ged, who is living with Tenar in contented retirement on the island of Gont. Alder has been sent by the Masters of Roke, because he has been dreaming strangely of the land of the dead (known as the dry land). Though Ged no longer has any power, he knows more about the dry land than any man living, for he entered it long ago to defeat the wizard Cob, who breached the barrier between death and life in his search for immortality.

The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
What is the strength of a word? What is the weakness of censorship? Can a message, a way of life, a people ever be truly wiped away? The author puts the reader in the middle of this struggle and allows the truth to unveil itself. For those caught up in the journey it is a revelation; one that will play through the mind again and again.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
It's a book of opposites: a utopian novel that doesn't flinch from exposing the flaws of its model society, a feminist-themed narrative with a male protagonist, a social commentary that presents communal cooperation as the truest human ideal, yet focuses on the inevitable separateness of the creative individual within such a structure. Through these dichotomies, the author examines the tension between human aspiration and human nature, between what can be dreamed and what can be achieved.