Rating: 
Summary: Cultures clashing within and without--fascinating
Review: Ursula K. LeGuin has created a simple and spare story of one woman, Sutty, sent as observer to a world where Science is intent on destroying all history in its march for the stars. On Sutty's Earth, fanatics attempted the same thing, for the same of religion rather than science. Aka's old ways are based on Telling--repeating of old stories, poems, and life lessons. These, however, are being suppressed to the point where only one library remains--and Sutty will either preserve or destroy it. For those of us who remember the Cultural Revolution or any of the other attempts by right thinkers to eliminate even the history of thoughts other than their own, The Telling is a calm reminder--a telling. I think LeGuin has hit exactly the right tone and adopted the right style to tell this story. It is a very personal story, but like the stories of The Telling, it is a story that forms a microcosm to much that is real on every scale.
Rating: 
Summary: As Simplistic As the Space Opera LeGuin Decries
Review: A generation ago, Ursula LeGuin seemed well on her way to becoming the finest science fiction and fantasy writer there was. By the late 1960s, she had published three earnest, promising novels (Planet of Exile, Rocannon's World, City of Illusions) that shared the common background of the Ekumen, a humanoid league sponsored by the ancient race of Hain, who had peopled a number of worlds. Then came The Left Hand of Darkness, another Ekumen novel, and the wonders of the Earthsea trilogy. In all these works, LeGuin showed a genius for naming, richness in character portrayal, and deft plotting. From there it has largely been downhill. Beginning about 1970, LeGuin's fiction changed. The early romanticism began to dry up, gradually replaced by a spare, sullen outlook and style. Moreover, LeGuin's own simplistic, facile, black-and-white political and philosophical worldview began to color her work more and more. The Word for World is Forest was awash in that perspective, and The Dispossessed, the last major fiction to retain the spirit of her early work, was not immune from it. In the last quarter century, the author has churned out a number of likable children's books, published some journeyman poetry, and written science fiction and fantasy stories that in most cases serve as little more than modest frameworks on which she has hung her tired, pompous moralizing. The Telling doesn't do a whole lot to reverse this three-decade trend. LeGuin would be among the first to dismiss a typical raygun & alien space opera as simple-minded, but this latest story of hers is no more complex. Instead of one-dimensional, evil aliens we have the one-dimensional, evil Corporation. Instead of rayguns and other weapons to bail out the protagonists, we have the Telling, a "religion" that the author is of course vague in describing. LeGuin's capacity to depict character has withered away so much that now there is no character development to speak of, only stick figures with defining tags. What I find astounding, for example, is the degree to which the viewpoint character, Sutty, remains a complete cipher. Sutty's main tag is the loss of her lover, Pao, in an act of senseless violence. Yet, on Sutty's journey to the "last library" of the Telling, she has casual (to the character and apparently the author) sex with another member of the party. So, then, what does sex really mean to Sutty? What did Pao really mean to her? Throughout the book, Sutty is an empty vessel into which LeGuin has put no real characterization, and in the end the reader is left with no real idea what makes this person tick. Other elements grate as well. Early on, there is a short segment on the government brand of coffee, StarBrew, which is available "everywhere." Evidently this is meant as a little satire on Starbuck's. Well, I'm no fan of coffee culture, either, but this seems a silly, counter-productive addition to the narrative. LeGuin's final stab at the Earthsea world, the novel Tehanu, became a sour aftertaste to the original trilogy. Unfortunately, her recent returns to the Hainish universe are leaving the same sad traces in a body of work that could have been a masterwork of sf.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the wait!
Review: Twenty years ago I discovered Ursula Le Guin's Hainish novels, and devoured them. Two books in this series ----"The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Dispossessed" --- are classics that transcended the Science Fiction genre. Le Guin's novels could always be read on two levels - as science fiction adventure stories and as insightful social commentaries that used the medium of science fiction to hold a mirror up to our own society. Her strength was in weaving these two aspects of her work together with wonderfully language and imagery that would grab hold of the reader and not let them go until the last page - and then you would want to read the book again. So when I heard Le Guin had finally written another Hainish novel, "The Telling", I rushed to buy it. As the jacket cover says, "The Telling" is indeed a reflection on the conflict of politics and religion in the modern world. The novel is based on the world of Aka. There we find a monolithic corporate state populated by monochrome "producer-consumers". The corporate state dominates Aka, having recently replaced, but not totally suppressed, a society based on a religion with East Asian undertones whose central characteristic is an elaborate oral tradition know as "The Telling". The catalyst for this societal shift was first contact with the known worlds of the Ekumen. The central protagonist in the novel, Sutty, is an Earthwoman, who has been sent to Aka as an Observer. Earth itself is dominated by a monolithic religious state, which provides another point of contrast. Sutty's travels on Aka thrust her into the center of conflict between these ideologies. Well it's not a bad topic for a novel. There are certainly parallels here with our modern world that could be mined for literary gold, and Le Guin has shown herself up to that task in the past. But I can't finish the book. I've read 172 pages and really, it's dreadfully dull. The adventure is almost non-existence, the central characters are poorly developed and uninteresting, the pace of the narrative is glacial, and the social commentary seems forced and hackneyed. It just isn't that good a book. What a disappointment. I wondered whether it was my appetite that had changed over the last twenty years. Perhaps I had become too middle aged and conservative to get it? So I cracked open an old copy of the "The Left Hand of Darkness", and found myself drawn in again. No, I still love the stuff Le Guin use to write, but "The Telling" doesn't come close to recapturing the magic. My advice for readers, don't waste your time here. Instead, discover for the first time, or once again, her remarkable early novels.
Rating:
Summary: Spare Beauty
Review: In all respects: telling, characterization, setting, thematic threads, allegorical insights and poetic imagery, Le Guin gives the reader spare beauty. In doing so, she again illustrates that "less is more." This is a work that is best sipped slowly like wine, a work that finally takes the reader to that childhood window through which one gazes all the rest of one's life. If one is reflective, has an interest in current affairs, and hopes for a better future, Le Guin's novel has much to offer. If one is a reader, one knows by the telling that Le Guin knows her craft.
Rating:
Summary: Deep and complex
Review: This is not high fantasy - this is not Tehanu; it is a very deep, philosophical exploration into an alternate ( or 2 or 3 ) alternate) worlds for the purpose of exploring many parts of our own. She is a master of this, from Left Hand of Darkness which I just reread. And what about the Dispossessed? We should all shout our thanks for another Ursula LeGuin book. This one is much like this. It doesn't shout at you, there is no sex, so some will think it boring. But it should be read two or three times slowly as you have to do with the Dispossessed and all the Hainish books. So much of her mythology has touched all of our worlds - the ansible, the myth of Hainish. She continues to be a master
Rating:
Summary: Less Than Hoped For
Review: Slight. Dull. An apparent try at ' spare ' narative. Half-interested authors shouldn't be putting out books. Being that she is one of the few living authors I have enjoyed reading in the past twenty years, this is a true shame.
Rating:
Summary: A joy to read.
Review: This book is not destined to be one of Le Guin's classics. It is not The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed. It is, however, a wonderfully written tale. The plot is captivating, the writing is exquisite. What more can you ask for? I enjoyed it from the first page all the way to the last page. If you have never read Le Guin before, you might want to start with one of her earlier books. But if you are already a Le Guin fan (and who isn't?), you won't be disappointed with this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Weak Novel By The Great Ursula K. Leguin
Review: Although there are many beautiful passages in The Telling, there are some surprising and catastrophic weaknesses in this novel by Ursula Leguin. The principal weakeness of the work is the one-dimensionality both of the Corporation-State of Aka and the religion of the Telling which it has surpressed. Aka is B-A-D, the consumer, totalitarian, homophobic result of intervention by an evil, theocratic government on Earth. The religion of the Telling is G-O-O-D, gentle, yoga-practicing, process oriented and panentheistic. LeGuin is consistently concerned with nuance and tint in her portraits of alien societies, I was surprised at the tiny, tiny pallet with which she constructed Aka. In addition to the basic cliched nature of the conflict in Akan society, LeGuin surprisingly has the Telling's plot turn on the classic cliched character that has gone bad as a result of a single and overwhelming childhood familial trauma. It may be cliched because it's true, but I can always rent Marnie or watch Lifetime if I need a dose. It's hard to not recommend a novel by LeGuin because her prose style can be breath-taking, so buy the novel if you are a LeGuin junkie or have the money to burn. But, difficult as it is, I suggest waiting until the Telling comes out in paperback or skipping it all together. To enjoy her writing without being distracted by the weakness and cliche, there's always the chance to re-read the Dispossesed, the Left Hand of Darkness, Always Coming Home, or Searoad.
Rating: 
Summary: Le Guin does it again - but did it need to be done again?
Review: This is a successful piece of Taoist propaganda, slickly written, without a misstep from the first page to the last. Another Le Guin protaganist, shaky, confused, learns to trust the shaky confusion inside herself and stop searching for certainty. Sutty, a Terran from a particularly nasty theocratic part of Terra's future history, has come as an Ekumenical Observer to the planet Aka. In the time lost to her during nearly-as-fast-as-light travel, Aka has shifted from a culture valuing serenity, past wisdom, and literature, to a high-tech, march-to-the-stars culture, a culture which has criminalized all forms of ritual, even those of greeting and thanks, which has replaced the native word "fellow person" with a borrowed word meaning "producer-consumer." imagine a graduate student who's spent the last five years immersed in classical Chinese literature, trying to make sense of and live in modern Beijing. Sutty leaves the capital city and finds a cross between the Gethenians and the Kesh in the mountains, and events unfold, predictably. Blind adherence ot science loses to the wider view, rationality strangles itself; there's a miracle, but no one makes a big deal of it. It's connect-the-dots Le Guin. The last great Le Guin piece, "Always Coming Home," is a work that only be compared in this century to "Gravity's Rainbow," or, dare I say, "Ulysses." And considering that it's never going to be recognized as such, maybe I should accept that a writer who will never receive the acclaim she deserves outside of her genre is not going to bother anymore, and instead is going to churn out formula novels like this one. What bugs me though is that "The Telling" lacks even the cheap emotional excitement of her last few works, the heterosexual romantic drive of "Four Ways to Forgiveness," the mono-no-aware regret of most of "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." It's what I would NEVER expect Le Guin to be - it's dry. It's unsatisfactory. Oh Grandmother Little Bear Woman: Give us more, please. Who else but you has your vision?
Rating:
Summary: It's not SUPPOSED to be hardcore sci-fi
Review: This is a book of psychologically-developed science fiction. Quoting Le Guin in 1975's 'The Wind's Twelve Quarters': "Unless physical action reflects psychic action, unless the deeds express the person, I get very bored with adventure stories; often it seems that the more action there is, the less happens. Obviously my interest is in what goes on inside. Inner space and all that." I own and have read most of her career's work. She currently writes like the wise old crone she is, no longer "like a man", which readers may or may not appreciate. 'The Telling' illustrates the ways LeGuin's characters are forced to confront themselves psychologically, making choices based on experience, need, limitations: the old woman taking in her neighbor the political exile; the smartass diplomat chick trapped in a cell with the bodyguard she'd misunderstood from day one (and he, her); a man leaving the village and home planet as historian-adventurer, to the grief of his family. Thoughtful stuff set in the Hainish Cycle of Le Guin's created future.
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