Review: Planet of Exile

Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the writing, but the story seemed quite minimal. It’s a ‘humans team with aliens to combat others’ story that has great backstory and great descriptions, and a kind of twist in the beginning, but one where the story kind of fizzled. Without that twist, this would have been a very traditional high adventure combat story with heroes and villains, one that Le Guin would have done well with, but not her cup of tea. Instead, we get a tiny bit of a love story that changes planetary history. There is still adventure and battle against overwhelming odds, but it seemed lessened given the arc of the story. The ending seems to have been a convenient way to wrap up the novel quickly. This felt too manufactured. But again, the world-building writing was quite interesting. You felt the story was written in the 60s, with the questioning of a declining society and dealing with inter-speciel (?) relationships. This felt of its time.

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