On the planet Athshe, there is no word for war, there is no concept of murder, there is no language of hate. The world is one vast, green, gentle forest full of people who live between the world-time and the dream-time, who resolve their conflicts by means of ceremonial singing. Then the Terran League discovers Athshe's existence and a pattern of "colonization"-very similar to the exploitation of "primitive" cultures on Earth-begins to destroy the planet and its people; and, eventually, one young Athshean named Selver learns how to hate.
So far, everything I’ve read by Ursula K. Le Guin has been amazing: thought-provoking, balanced, deeply-envisioned worlds. This book, about humans colonising a forested planet inhabited by distant humanoid cousins, is no different.
It was written in the mid-1970s, at the height of the Vietnam War, and her outrage seeps through everywhere, even as she tries to write from the hee-haw cowboy colonist’s point of view (something she warns you about in her introduction). Still, you get a real sense of all sides of the conflict between the humans trying to make the world habitable for them, the unspeakable (and often unintentional) damage to the environment as they blunder about it (hello topical subject matter), and the Asthsheans who have reached a near-total balance of living with their forested world.
Also, she beautifully waxes philosophical about words and meanings, and dreaming and reality, and the word for “god” being the same as that for “translator” in Athshean. And, of course, humans hailing from Earth - clayish, muddy - and the Athsheans calling their planet Forest (in earthhling language).
All in all, another intense and gorgeous read that made me more determined to read everything she ever wrote.
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