Rating: 
Summary: Simply fascinating !
Review: Ursula Le Guin is one of my favorite authors (SF or otherwise) - "The Dispossesed" being my personal choice as the best book she wrote. But this story collection is definitely a tie for the second place along with "The Left Hand of Darkness". No doubt the inclusion of the story "The Day before the Revolution" affects my choice - but that's not the only great story this book has. In fact, I liked almost all the stories that are included - and a book which contains even 3 or 4 stories as good as "The Day before..", "The Masters", "Things", "The ones who walked away from Omelas", etc. deserves to be considered as a classic. Personally I am fascinated by Laia Asieo Odo, the anarchist philosopher who is alluded to in "The Dispossesed" (part of the reason I like it so much is its almost believable portraiture of a functioning anarchist society) - and is only explored as a person in the story "The Day before..". I wish Le Guin had given a novel-length treatment of Odo as a person and her development of the syndicalist philosophy.To go back to the stories in "The Wind's Twelve Quarters" - what I find so fascinating is the wide range of stories that are included: from the delightful dargon-and-sorcery fantasy of "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" (the only comparably charming dragons I can think of appear in some of the fables of Orson Scott Card) to the melancholic, existential "Things" and "The stars below" (where an astronomer whose observatory has been burnt down by a mob, ends up living in a mine where the sparkle of the minerals become "the stars below" for him). Many of the stories really make you think about deep social and ethical issues. And then there are the stories which can be just enjoyed for the sheer joy of reading them, like the dragon stories and the time-travel romance, "April in Paris". All in all, a must-read for any thinking person!
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