|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
title = "Powers (Annals of the Western Shore, #3) - Ursula K. Le Guin"
|
|
|
|
|
date = 2018-05-27
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[taxonomies]
|
|
|
|
|
tags = ["books", "ursula k. le guin", "reviews",
|
|
|
|
|
"annals of the western shore", "fantasy", "5 stars"]
|
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68020.Powers):
|
|
|
|
|
Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and,
|
|
|
|
|
inexplicably, he sometimes "remembers" things that are going to happen in the
|
|
|
|
|
future. As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a
|
|
|
|
|
terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has
|
|
|
|
|
ever known.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<!-- more -->
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
{{ stars(stars=5) }}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"The story of a boy becoming a man."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Or "The story of a slave becoming a freeman."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Or "The story of a man traveling across its country."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All those could serve as a quick description of the story. And all of them
|
|
|
|
|
would be, at least, a bit wrong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because it's not just one of those. It's all of those. And a bit more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At first, I was quite disappointed 'cause the "Powers" at the title are
|
|
|
|
|
mentioned very early and then... nothing. There is a lot of going back and
|
|
|
|
|
forth (a few transitions are a bit weird, like suddenly the story being a
|
|
|
|
|
letter to the protagonist's wife) and you keep thinking "Were the heck is this
|
|
|
|
|
going on?" And then, suddenly, you keep reading a bit more because you want to
|
|
|
|
|
see a thread closed, and then read more, and more, and more... It's quite the
|
|
|
|
|
same feeling I got from _Changing Planes_, although the story here is way more
|
|
|
|
|
complex (not quite hard, as Changing Planes is a bunch of separate stories
|
|
|
|
|
instead of the continuous story of a slave who runs away, make friends, finds
|
|
|
|
|
his people, in a span of 10 or so years).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
One of the things that Le Guin impresses me is how the way she describes
|
|
|
|
|
things approaches the way _Isaac Asimov_ does: Describes the very minimum
|
|
|
|
|
necessary for the reader to understand why the characters are doing something,
|
|
|
|
|
and let their imagination soar with the rest. It's quite different from
|
|
|
|
|
_Arthur C Clarke_, which likes to over describe stuff.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the end, it was a story that I was mostly uninterested at first but that
|
|
|
|
|
deeply moved me in the very end.
|
