Voices (Annals of the Western Shore Series #2) Book

My favourite of the three - often the subject was unrelievedly painful to me (BURNING BOOKS OMG NO), but I really loved Memer's voice, utterly direct, plain, and believable, despite the sometimes heavy-handed Symbolism everywhere (her role in the book reminded me very much of Irena in Beginning Place).

I heard someone call these books 'Earthsea lite' but that's really unfair - the language is simpler, less mannered and archaic, but the people more complex, the plots more political. (Melle is certainly an echo of Tehanu and Memer of Tenar/Arha....) This book is more like what The Telling should have been, gripping, dramatic, felt from the interior instead of observed from outside, and much much shorter. I kind of hated La Guin for making me like the barbarian king asshole in this book and the slave king asshole in the third book, but she's gotten a lot better at complex villains over the whole of her career (witness the father in the first book) which I have to admire. I loved Orrec and Beaky too, even if at times I wanted to roll my eyes at their magnificent emo manpain. I think Beaky's book was aesthetically the best, but my heart belongs to Memer and her mixing of epic heroism and marketing. There's also an emphasis on reading and telling, what books mean (not 'just' literacy) through the whole trilogy which I really liked.

It's pretty amazing Le Guin can still write like this. I think the only other unread recent major work I have by her is Lavinia, which I'll be sad to finish.