The Scholars Trilogy
Feb. 27th, 2013 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselJul 2012
Gifts / Voices / Powers - Ursula Le Guin - Orbit,
* * * * / * * * * * / * * * *
Now this is more like it. Rather than trying to retrofit a classic, Le Guin has written a new trilogy of books called the Annals of the Western Shore. Ostensibly they are for young people, but the only thing that makes them so are the teenage protagonists. The other linking factor is a love of literature, hence my alternate title. It also reflects the patient attitude that you have to bring to the stories. There are very few maps to fish you in, the magic is next to nonexistent and the plot synopses would frankly have bored my teenage self to tears. But bring the patience that you would bring to a classic novel by Dickens or Austen, wait for the stories to unfold, and they will reward you with their subtle and mature insights.
Gifts introduces us to such magic as is found in the Western Shore. Le Guin has chosen a very simple idea - people have a single power, or gift, that runs in male or female lines, such as the ability to call animals or inflict a wasting disease. The genetic component is clearly recessive, for the talents have largely died out except in the bleak uplands where the small pool of people and careful inbreeding have preserved them. The man or woman with the strongest manifestation of the power becomes the leader, or brantor, of the Celtic-style tribal domain and must protect it against the depredations of their neighbours. Orrec is the teenage son of Canoc, the brantor of Caspromant, and is expected to take the leadership after him. But the Caspro gift is that of Unmaking, and when Orrec's power starts to manifest, it proves to be dangerously uncontrollable. He must go about with bound eyes so that he does not kill by accident. Only his friendship with Gry, the daughter of the neighbouring brantor of Roddmant, keeps him sane.
This is not, to be honest, the best Le Guin story ever, but it is powerful and well-told. Given the powerfully destructive nature of the magic, I couldn't quite believe in the set-up where the brantors are constantly attacking each other - the possibility of dying in a gratuitously unpleasant way would, one would have thought, discouraged such rivalries. I was also mildly irritated by the way in which the story resolved, which requires generations of people to have been stupid. But nonetheless, it's a satisfying story.
Orrec and Gry appear as secondary characters in Voices, the second and best of the trilogy. It takes place in Ansul, a mediterranean town at the southern end of the Western Shore which has been invaded by a desert people called the Alds who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Afghan Taliban. They believe that demons hide in words and so have destroyed the libraries and temples for which Ansul used to be famous, throwing all the books they contained into the harbour. But a secret library remains in the House of the Oracle, guarded by the crippled Waylord and his daughter Memer. Then Orrec and Gry arrive from the north and their stories trigger a revolution.
There is little magic in this story, and what there is doesn't really fit with the magic of Gifts. But the plot is dramatic and compelling, and tackles a scarily relevant topic - the difficult question of how civilised and literate people can throw off ignorant and bigotted oppressors without descending to their level. How do you defeat the Taliban? By identifying the ones with a flicker of humanity, and encouraging them. And how do you do that? By telling stories that emphasise our common humanity. Voices is one such.
Gavir, the protagonist of Powers, has the gift of precognition, but it has very little role other than to act as motivation and to weaken the story by telegraphing the ending. It is an oddly structured book. The first half is set in Etra, a city state about half way up the Western Shore. He is a slave, but a happy one, being owned by an enlightened master and mistress who educate him and his sister Sallo with their own children. But then bad things happen and Gavir goes on a picaresque tour of various societies to learn more about his gift and to find somewhere where he can be free and safe.
This book is a reminder of just how good Le Guin is at inventing interesting and believable communities, and it has some of her best creations since The Dispossessed. But I did get a little tired of the constant use of male violence to move the plot on. This theme and that of the importance of scholarship are a common thread in all the books and I have a nasty feeling that the point that Le Guin is trying to make is that the one is the counter-balance to the other. Men, she is saying, are naturally violent, and only education tames them sufficiently to make them bearable. Which may be true in some cases, but it seems unbalanced not to similarly explore the benefits of education and perils of ignorance for the female of the species. As it stands, one is left with the impression (inadvertant I am sure) that women don't need education because they "naturally" know everything.
Whatever - I am probably over-thinking what are, after all, children's books. And as a strong supporter of both scholarship and well-told stories, I have to say that they are good ones.
Gifts / Voices / Powers - Ursula Le Guin - Orbit,
* * * * / * * * * * / * * * *
Now this is more like it. Rather than trying to retrofit a classic, Le Guin has written a new trilogy of books called the Annals of the Western Shore. Ostensibly they are for young people, but the only thing that makes them so are the teenage protagonists. The other linking factor is a love of literature, hence my alternate title. It also reflects the patient attitude that you have to bring to the stories. There are very few maps to fish you in, the magic is next to nonexistent and the plot synopses would frankly have bored my teenage self to tears. But bring the patience that you would bring to a classic novel by Dickens or Austen, wait for the stories to unfold, and they will reward you with their subtle and mature insights.
Gifts introduces us to such magic as is found in the Western Shore. Le Guin has chosen a very simple idea - people have a single power, or gift, that runs in male or female lines, such as the ability to call animals or inflict a wasting disease. The genetic component is clearly recessive, for the talents have largely died out except in the bleak uplands where the small pool of people and careful inbreeding have preserved them. The man or woman with the strongest manifestation of the power becomes the leader, or brantor, of the Celtic-style tribal domain and must protect it against the depredations of their neighbours. Orrec is the teenage son of Canoc, the brantor of Caspromant, and is expected to take the leadership after him. But the Caspro gift is that of Unmaking, and when Orrec's power starts to manifest, it proves to be dangerously uncontrollable. He must go about with bound eyes so that he does not kill by accident. Only his friendship with Gry, the daughter of the neighbouring brantor of Roddmant, keeps him sane.
This is not, to be honest, the best Le Guin story ever, but it is powerful and well-told. Given the powerfully destructive nature of the magic, I couldn't quite believe in the set-up where the brantors are constantly attacking each other - the possibility of dying in a gratuitously unpleasant way would, one would have thought, discouraged such rivalries. I was also mildly irritated by the way in which the story resolved, which requires generations of people to have been stupid. But nonetheless, it's a satisfying story.
Orrec and Gry appear as secondary characters in Voices, the second and best of the trilogy. It takes place in Ansul, a mediterranean town at the southern end of the Western Shore which has been invaded by a desert people called the Alds who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Afghan Taliban. They believe that demons hide in words and so have destroyed the libraries and temples for which Ansul used to be famous, throwing all the books they contained into the harbour. But a secret library remains in the House of the Oracle, guarded by the crippled Waylord and his daughter Memer. Then Orrec and Gry arrive from the north and their stories trigger a revolution.
There is little magic in this story, and what there is doesn't really fit with the magic of Gifts. But the plot is dramatic and compelling, and tackles a scarily relevant topic - the difficult question of how civilised and literate people can throw off ignorant and bigotted oppressors without descending to their level. How do you defeat the Taliban? By identifying the ones with a flicker of humanity, and encouraging them. And how do you do that? By telling stories that emphasise our common humanity. Voices is one such.
Gavir, the protagonist of Powers, has the gift of precognition, but it has very little role other than to act as motivation and to weaken the story by telegraphing the ending. It is an oddly structured book. The first half is set in Etra, a city state about half way up the Western Shore. He is a slave, but a happy one, being owned by an enlightened master and mistress who educate him and his sister Sallo with their own children. But then bad things happen and Gavir goes on a picaresque tour of various societies to learn more about his gift and to find somewhere where he can be free and safe.
This book is a reminder of just how good Le Guin is at inventing interesting and believable communities, and it has some of her best creations since The Dispossessed. But I did get a little tired of the constant use of male violence to move the plot on. This theme and that of the importance of scholarship are a common thread in all the books and I have a nasty feeling that the point that Le Guin is trying to make is that the one is the counter-balance to the other. Men, she is saying, are naturally violent, and only education tames them sufficiently to make them bearable. Which may be true in some cases, but it seems unbalanced not to similarly explore the benefits of education and perils of ignorance for the female of the species. As it stands, one is left with the impression (inadvertant I am sure) that women don't need education because they "naturally" know everything.
Whatever - I am probably over-thinking what are, after all, children's books. And as a strong supporter of both scholarship and well-told stories, I have to say that they are good ones.