Customer Reviews

Orsinian Tales: Stories

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Ms Le Guin is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer, winner of several Hugo and Nebula Awards, author of the remarkable "Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) and the "Earthsea" cycle (1970 - 2001).

With "Orsinian Tales" (1976) she surprises the reader with a collection of short stories placed in an imaginary country: Orsinia. This country has all the traits of a Central European one (just as the fictional Ruritania of "Prisoner of Zenda"). The characters names and psychology have resonances of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, giving a special undertone to all the tales.
The stories take place in different time periods (in the last page of each one, is shown the year of occurrence) allowing the reader to have a side-glance of the historical evolution of the country.

The tales are written in "minimalists" style, that is to say they portray every day scenes, no great adventures or speculations, just insights of ordinary people in ordinary situations. With this simple stuff Ms. Le Guin construct an engaging collection, full of touching details as in "Imaginary Countries". Family relationships and interaction with neighbors in a small town are described with a keen and gentle regard in "Night Talks".

A lovely sample of Le Guin's short prose.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

OK, first off, if you're looking for SF to read, don't bother with this book, because SF it's not, even though it's by Ursula Le Guin. On the other hand, if you're looking for some beautifully written, well-crafted short stories, you might well stop and read.

ORSINIAN TALES is a collection of "mainstream" short stories set in the imaginary Eastern European country of Orsinia, which take place in various time periods ranging from the pagan Dark Ages to the 17th century to the Cold War. They are by turns grim, joyous, lyrical, wistful, and always fascinating. My one cavil is that the date of each story's setting is placed at the end of the story, so if you're not quite sure of the story's period (the period is not always terribly well defined in the opening of the stories, and it makes a difference--at least to me--if a tale is set in 1905 or 1950) you have to peek ahead. But it's a small quibble with a lovely piece of literature.

The Orsinian Tales take place in a fictional country of Orsinia, which could be any of the former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe, with time periods of the stories ranging from the 11th century to 1960's and the centuries in between. After reading the Wizard of Earthsea and the Left Hand of Darkness, I had high expectations of this book and I was not disappointed. It has the same poetic flow and depth of characters that made Usula Le Guin's fantasy and sci-fi books such a pleasure to read and it is now one of my favorite collections of short stories. These stories have nothing to do with fantasy or sci-fi. They are so-called mainstream stories about ordinary people who make extraordinary choices. The story plots are not connected to each other and only two of the stories involve the same characters. The stories, however, are definitely not unrelated: there is a common theme running through them. The characters live in worlds where happiness seems an unobtainable dream and even preserving the belief in your right to happiness is a constant challenge. They encounter situations where a choice must be made between the path of least resistance and the path to struggling for happiness on their own terms. The characters' realizations of their needs, and the (implied) realization of their right to fulfill those needs, are the ingredients for the drama of each story. This theme dawns on you after reading the first several stories and it is the reason why the stories work much better as a collection than they would separately.

This is a wonderful collection of short stories, interweaving in subtlety and setting, but never redundant or dependent on each other. I read them out of order, on and off whenever I felt like it, taking time to appreciate the stories.

The stories range in immediate setting from cities to country towns to castles to gardens, but all are set in the fictional country of Orsinia. The characters range from kings to doctors to blinded soldiers to twice-divorced women returning to their original love, but all are richly drawn in a surprisingly minimalist fashion. Ursula K. Le Guin writes with superb mastery of human nature, sucking her readers into the stories in a remarkably short amount of time--extremely necessary in such a short story.

Probably my favorite stories in the collection are "The Lady of Moge" "Conversations by Night" or "The Barrow." Definitely worth buying and reading. These stories will never get boring.

Orsinian tales is very well written with Leguin's usual economy and grace. But it's frequently depressing. So take in small doses.

Ms. Le Guin is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer, winner of several Hugo and Nebula Awards, author of the remarkable The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and the "Earthsea" cycle (1970 - 2001).

With "Orsinian Tales" (1976) she surprises the reader with a collection of short stories placed in an imaginary country: Orsinia. This country has all the traits of a Central European one (just as the fictional Ruritania of "Prisoner of Zenda"). The characters names and psychology have resonances of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, giving a special undertone to all the tales.
The stories take place in different time periods (in the last page of each story, is shown the year of occurrence) allowing the reader to have a side-glance of the historical evolution of the country.

The tales are written in "minimalists" style, that is to say they portray every day scenes, no great adventures or speculations, just insights of ordinary people in ordinary situations. With this simple stuff Ms. Le Guin construct an engaging stories collection, full of touching details as in "Imaginary Countries". Family relationships and interaction with neighbors in a small town are described with a keen and gentle regard in "Night Talks".

This is a lovely sample of Le Guin's short prose.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Ms. Le Guin is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer, winner of several Hugo and Nebula Awards, author of the remarkable "Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) and the "Earthsea" cycle (1970 - 2001).

With "Orsinian Tales" (1976) she surprises the reader with a collection of short stories placed in an imaginary country: Orsinia. This country has all the traits of a Central European one (just as the fictional Ruritania of "Prisoner of Zenda"). The characters names and psychology have resonances of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, giving a special undertone to all the tales.
The stories take place in different time periods (in the last page of each story, is shown the year of occurrence) allowing the reader to have a side-glance of the historical evolution of the country.

The tales are written in "minimalists" style, that is to say they portray every day scenes, no great adventures or speculations, just insights of ordinary people in ordinary situations. With this simple stuff Ms. Le Guin construct an engaging stories collection, full of touching details as in "Imaginary Countries". Family relationships and interaction with neighbors in a small town are described with a keen and gentle regard in "Night Talks".

This is a lovely sample of Le Guin's short prose.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Most of the stories in this collection were written in 1970s, when LeGuin was at the height of her powers. This is a sustained work of historical fiction, not the science fiction that made LeGuin famous. The stories are a series of well developed vignettes set at various times in the fictional Eastern European nation of Orsinia, which combines features of several nations in Eastern Europe. All the stories in this collection are very well written, combining excellent character depiction and psychological development with a nice feeling for historic events. A recurrent theme is the collision of certain kinds of ideals with the demands and realities of ordinary life. This is some of LeGuin's best work, comparable in quality, though different in character, to books like The Lathe of Heaven.

Ms Le Guin is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer, winner of several Hugo and Nebula Awards, author of the remarkable "Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) and the "Earthsea" cycle (1970 - 2001).

With "Orsinian Tales" (1976) she surprises the reader with a collection of short stories placed in an imaginary country: Orsinia. This country has all the traits of a Central European one (just as the fictional Ruritania of "Prisoner of Zenda"). The characters names and psychology have resonances of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, giving a special undertone to all the tales.
The stories take place in different time periods (in the last page of each story, is shown the year of occurrence) allowing the reader to have a side-glance of the historical evolution of the country.

The tales are written in "minimalists" style, that is to say they portray every day scenes, no great adventures or speculations, just insights of ordinary people in ordinary situations. With this simple stuff Ms. Le Guin construct an engaging collection, full of touching details as in "Imaginary Countries". Family relationships and interaction with neighbors in a small town are described with a keen and gentle regard in "Night Talks".

This is a lovely sample of Le Guin's short prose.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

This is my first encounter with Ursula Guinn, and I'm uncomfortable with it and not impressed. True, the prose is well crafted, but the plots are twisted and bizarre, and it truly feels like a man is writing who has a dim view of females, which doesn't please me one bit. I'm not even half way through and not sure I'll finish. I am a great fan of fantasy, fiction and political non-fiction alike, so my typical range is broad. However, I think I'll try a different book, as this one is comprised of short stories with a devastatingly dark and gloomy feel to them. I've heard such great things about Ursula Guinn that I don't want to give up yet; perhaps I'll pick a new book of hers and start over with a clean slate.