Damn, Ursula is such a good writer. This book is a bit boring, though it has elements of everything that I like.

It's very similar to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in that its main theme is the contrast between the cultures & lifestyles of two rivaling planets. LeGuinn's planets are explicitly capitalist and anarcho-communist though.

The story is split into two halves, and then re-interleaved which is a super fun flash forward/backward.

The first chapter starts in the middle of the story, and the second chapter starts at the beginning of the story, then they advance in lock step, with the even numbered chapters convering towards the middle of the story, and the odd numbered chapters progressing towards the end. This allows for some cool "well we know how that works out, but how does she connect the dots" situations when reading, and also really helps bounce back and forth from the anarcho-commie planet to the profiteering planet, hammering the reader with their juxtaposition.

I also really like that idk LeGuinn's personal stance at the object level of either ideology – the point is that they both suck. Neither is a hamfisted glorification, both are reveered at parts (for their empathy/compassion and freedom's or illusions thereof, respectively).

The story follow's one Oppenheimer-esque characters journey from one planet to the other as he pursues a theory for FTL technology, and is challenged at home and abroad by thorns of each ideology.

LeGuinn again provides some deep, DEEP wisdom about the human condition through this very (almost painfully) sci-fi setting in that it's not intended to be a "and this will happen to human civilization in X hundred years, be warned." As such, the names of things are unnecessarily obtuse and extra-terrestrial sounding, but I can get over that.

The novel is serious :tm: so there's no grand climax (other than the one that happens in the middle of the story/at the very beginning of the book). It leaves the reader wanting and unsatisfied x

– leaves us wanting, though not for lack of rhetorical capability; that is in fact the thesis: that both ideologies are flawed and we must find purpose outside of the binary between Hume's commune, and the libertariatard's fantasy (and it probably also doesn't exist in in some moderate combination).

related