Rating: 
Summary: to tell, not to explain
Review: Ursula Le Guin's "The Telling" is not her greatest work. However, I don't think it's as disappointing as some people have said. We merely have higher expectations of Le Guin than of other authors.In "The Telling," Sutty Dass, born on an Earth ruled by a fanatic, monotheistic theocracy bent on exterminating science, is an Ekumenical Observer on Aka, a planet first contacted by Terrans. Aka is now ruled by a fanatic, consumeristic technocracy bent on exterminating religion. Sutty leaves Dovza, the center of the technocracy, and travels to Okzat-Ozkat, a mountain village where some of the old ways survive. While there, she tries to understand the old Akan philosophsy/religion/way of life, and to learn why Aka has changed so radically. It is true that Sutty's character is a bit hard to pin down, but I think that's because she's avoiding her past and doesn't understand herself. Le Guin's writing is subtle, and should be read slowly; if you miss any little detail, the whole picture becomes blurred and two-dimensional. While some reviewers have said that Le Guin shows the Corporation State as Bad, and the old ways, known as the Telling, as Good, they are missing details. The Telling was perverted in Dovza before the Terrans came, and the Corporation was in part a reaction against that, which is perfectly understandable. Furthermore, the Corporation embodies some values of the Telling, and much of its fanaticism against religion comes not from a reaction against Akan culture, but against the Terran theocracy. Also, Aka suffered from wars and sickness under the old ways, and the Telling contains a lot of mystic mumbo-jumbo; it's not perfect. Still, these things are subtle, and one of the other complaints, that much is told while little is shown, is fairly accurate. Le Guin has said that the best writing should completely embody a theme within its characters and story, so you don't realize you're reading a sermon of sorts; she has also said she tends to fail at total embodiment of themes. She fails again here. But "The Telling" is lovely and poetic, despite a deliberate pace and an occasional sense of preachiness. I do wish Le Guin had drawn her characters a bit more clearly. I wish the ending didn't feel quite so rushed. I wish she had shown a bit more of Sutty's research into the Telling, which I found quite interesting. But I think some of the abruptness and lack of explanation come because she's demonstrating a characteristic of the Telling: to tell, not to explain. If speculative literature makes you think, whether you agree with the book's premise or not, it succeeds. By that criterion, I think "The Telling" is successful. If a novel is enjoyable, it also succeeds. For me, "The Telling" is successful on both levels.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome return to Ekumen in novel form
Review: "The Telling," like Le Guin's 1972 novella "The World for Word is Forest," is much more about our own world than the world it explores. Here, a lesbian woman of East Indian descent, Sutty, signs on to be an ambassador for the Hainish Ekumen (the Hainish originally seeded human life on all the member planets) when her lover is killed by fundamentalist terrorists on earth. But in transit, relativity plays a cruel trick on her: In the 60 years she's been traveling in a Nearly-As-Fast-As-Light starship, the planet Aka has adopted a severe, technophilic society not unlike that of Maoist China. Indeed, the Corporation State has done its best to eradicate its previous culture, a Tao-like, creedless system of wisdom known as "The Telling." Sutty eventually travels to a distant, mountainous place where people secretly maintain their old system, and there she discovers how her own planet Terra may have catalyzed the culture-destroying changes. As in Le Guin's 1969 classic, "The Left Hand of Darkness," the protagonist enters the society hoping to learn, and eventually undertakes a journey, this time deep into the heart of the high mountains. Here, the village of Ozkat-Ozkat is sharply reminiscent of Chinese-occupied Tibet. Le Guin is brilliant at this sort of thing, and while the story is quite simple and takes a while to catch fire, the denouement is moving, engaging and illuminating. I still think she has a penchant for somewhat cold and distant, even a bit sterile, characters, but that detracts only a bit from this tale. It's not as adventurous as "Left Hand," not as detailed in its world-building as "The Dispossessed," and lacking the action of "...World is Forest," but it's still a thoughtful, entertaining read. "The Telling" is a meditation on cultural decimation, fundamentalism, colonialism and even gay rights, Earthly issues, that just happens to be played out on a distant world.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid Book Deserves a Read
Review: I'll admit my bias for being a very big Le Guin fan. I just really enjoy her imagination and style; especially her Taoist and anthropological influences.
The Telling is a solid addition to the Hainish cycle, but no, it can't touch her true classics suchs as 'The Left Hand of Darnkess' or 'Always Comming Home' (non-hainish entry). I feel, though, that Sutty is one of her most compelling heroines.
The story is about a Terran born woman, Sutty, who joins the inter-planetary Ekumen (made up of people's from many different planets). Sutty is then stationed at a recent entry into the organization, 'Aka', which is a planet that has recently undergone a huge social revolution. A culture that was once unified and very spiritual has now become a society of Consumer-Producers led by the Corporation. The Akans are mistrustful of the aliens, while at the same time idolizing the technological mastery of the Ekumen.
Basically the premise of this book is a (very) thin veil for the Chineese-Tibet situation. I doubt that it was Le Guin's intention to be subtle as the similarities are just too obvious.
When Sutty first arrives on Aka she is overwhelmed. She is an emotional wreck. The city she is stationed in is sterile and efficient with no soul. The only other alien on the planet, Tong Ov, gives her the assignment of moving outside of the city into a rural area, under the pretenses of a vacation, to search for clues and information about the culture of the planet prior to the secularizing of the planet.
Sutty travels to the village Okzat-Ozkat, where she finds much of the old ways still vibrant and an important part of the daily life of the people. She becomes immersed in their culture and is eventually invited to travel to the only remaining library, located high up in the nearby mountains. The library is hidden due to the fact that all writting on the old ways is illegal. the Corporation would like to get their hands on the library and destroy the remaining texts.
Overall it's a relatively simple read. Le Guin hasn't lost her smooth writting style and beautiful, spiritually descriptive style. I recommend this book if you are already familiar with Le Guin's work, if not, I suggest starting with one of her earlier books.
Rating:
Summary: A mediocre book from a great author
Review: Sutty leaves Earth to become an Observer on the planet Aka. Once there, she is disillusioned by the dystopian society that has done away with the planet's rich history. Or so they think. Her mentor, Tong Ov, finally gains the ability to allow one Observer to travel outside the limits of Dovza City to experience life outside the Corporation that controls daily life. She travels to the village of Okzat-Ozkat and discovers a hidden oral tradition called The Telling and a small group of people that are trying to keep this "religion" alive while under the rule of the Corporation.
While I enjoyed Le Guin's rich descriptions of the Telling, the villages, the scenery, her characters fell flat, coming across as very one-dimensional and never really developed. I never empathized with Sutty and her feelings of supposed disbelief that what was once such a rich culture had, within the course of a few decades, obliterated its past; the same with the other characters. I felt more as though I were sitting through a college lecture on culture, society and history. The parallels between modern society and the fictional societal upheavlas on Aka are very clear and kept me interested in at least finishing the novel. Not one of her best works, but it does give an interesting look into what could happen if we let things get out of control.
Rating: 
Summary: No Telling What We May Have Lost, Read Le Guin & Be Reminded
Review:
Glad The Telling found me...
Ursula K. Le Guin brings the emotional, mother/sister/daughter/crone/whore perspective to the observation of alien culture. Not just a battle of two worlds, The Telling delves deeper into the history and culture lost to domination motivated power plays. Sometimes you find the best of a culture hidden in the black market, and on Aka, story time is an illegal commodity.
This book took me in and didn't let go; Sutty's curiosity is contagious and unraveling the two different worlds from each other entraps the mind in a puzzle of imagination's creations. All of the alien words are given a translation or approximate equivalency except for the illegal "he/she/they" term that Ursula hides from us like a Leprechaun's stash of gold. I know of no pronoun in the English language to express a respectful singular and plural masculine and feminine, any ideas?
The book almost lost me during the long hike into Silong due to an avalanche of jealousy, wanting to be removed from my own struggling civilization and hiking though a snow bound wonderland of Mountains in solitude. Putting off chores I found the end of the book complete and acceptable, allowing my own ending to fill daydreams for a time.
If your preferred reading flexes, elongates the muscle of imagination, then The Telling and Ursula K. Le Guin is for you. And, at the next opportunity Tell or read a story to the child or elder of your choice.
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.
Rating:
Summary: Substandard
Review: If you read her book on how to be a good writer, this novel breaks all her own advice. It is not a story that follows characters wherever they will go, but a way to promote new-age ideals like tai chi over aerobics, herb tea over coffee, country living over city living, grass-roots over government, and in promotion of daoism. I am generally in favor of the same ideals, but I don't think it is appropriate for a novel to do the judging for us... a good novel allows the reader to see the consequences and judge for themselves. I read more than half the book, hoping for something different, but the middle of the book became more and more clogged with promoting her own opinions: exactly what the theme of the book intends to judge. A terrible irony! Now, I must concede, she is a smart woman: maybe she has written so judgmentally (in favor of daoism) to make fun of her self... this would be a clever irony. But if this is the conscious intention of the novel, wouldn't you think some hint of this would have been given by halfway through the dragging plot?
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