Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin

Planet of Exile is not an Ursula K. Le Guin book I'd heard of before. I came on to my radar through my NoveList project, where I take my top ten lists from previous years and look for "read-alikes" on the Novelist database, then read them and compare them to the books that apparently sparked the association.

This particular book is what the database spit out as a read-alike for The Fifth Season, which was without a doubt the best book I read last year. If you could give me another book about a world trembling on the end of existing, a society about to collapse, nature itself turning harsh and brutally hostile, I would be in. And that's what I got here, although the Seasons in Planet of Exile are not as erratic as those in The Fifth Season. They're merely very, very long. Like sixty earth-years long. I shudder at the idea of a sixty year winter.

We are not in the best-known section of Le Guin's oeuvre here, but that made it a little bit more delightful. I know most people won't have read this one, but although I don't think Planet of Exile is stunning, I would argue that it's well worth a read.

So, what is it about? The title refers to the plight of the "farborn," - humans, so far as we know, living on this planet with very very long seasons. Over six hundred earth-years ago, most of the farborn left during a war in their Galactic confederacy (I can't remember what word Le Guin uses precisely there, but that's close.)  In six hundred years, those who were left behind have had no contact with their former civilization. They don't know if it even exists, but they're pretty sure they're forgotten and will never be recovered. Over the six hundred years, they've lost some of their technologies, but not all of them, and are keenly aware of what they've lost.

Also on the planet are what the farborn call the hilfs, (Highly Intelligent Life Forms), and what the hilfs call people or humans. Vaguely humanoid, lighter-skinned than the farborn, although still not what present-day Western society would call "white." They're smaller, but generally physically compatible, although genetically, mixing has tended to lead to stillbirths.

And winter is coming, inexorably, and much faster than in George R.R. Martin. With the winter may come the Gaal, a ghostly white race who raids the edges of hilf society, causing inconvenience and localized trouble, but nothing organized. Until this winter. Under the rule of one unusual Gaal, they're stripping hilf cities and trying to occupy them, only to be driven out under the cruel grasp of winter as it descends, leaving nothing behind to sustain a society through sixty years of cold.

The farborn hear of this first, and they try to organize with the local hilfs to repel the invaders. The hilfs do not particularly trust the farborn, and even less when the farborn leader, after an incident wherein he was able to mindspeak a hilf woman, falls in love with her. (The farborn have some degree of telepathic communication, which they believe the hilf incapable of.)

This is a book about being far away from the culture in which you were raised, knowing you'll never get back to it. And the mistrust between those who have been there longer, although both have now been around for over half a millennium, our time. It's also about assumptions about capabilities, in both directions - what the farborn think the hilf can do, what the hilf presume about the farborn. And whether they can come together as the Gaal and winter come to try to survive for one more Season.

Again, it's not Le Guin's best. But I quite enjoyed this, and the suggestion of it as a read-alike to The Fifth Season was a good one. However, don't look for Jemisin's emotional gut-punch here - this is less intense.