Unintelligible

I could not tell what half the stories were about. the prose was vivid and beautiful

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Difficult/frustrating to navigate audiobook

This is a wonderful book and is read beautifully. I would recommend it to anyone. But not this audiobook version.
This is a collection of many (I think 12+) novellas. With a collection this size, you should be able to skip one story and go to the next, or choose which story you want to read not necessarily in a linear order. But it is impossible to do this. The audiobook is divided by a hundred or more 'chapters' but not by novella and most books have quite a number of chapters. So you can't event work out which book you're up to from the chapter numbers. What is perhaps more annoying is that it is not always clear when one novella ends and another begins. One story runs into the next while you are listening. There is no pause and no indication one book has ended, except that the title of the next book is read out. But it is not always clear if this is a new book or just a new chapter in the old book (especially as some of these books share common universes). It is frustrating because it is otherwise such an amazing audiobook let down by the technology/ navigation.

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31 people found this helpful

A treasure trove of gems from a great writer

These stories are so much more than just science fiction or fantasy tales. Some take us far into the future to many worlds in UKlG's amazingly believable universe of planets peopled with beings, all unique but also quite human owing to a shared origin from the ancient Hainish who seeded many worlds in the distant past. This literary vehicle and the invention of almost lightspeed travel allows us to visit many planets, and UKlG to write about many topics: slavery, power relationships, amazing sexual relationships and endlessly fascinating and detailed descriptions of enthralling cultures, societies and struggles. She uses the vehicle of fiction to question, to wonder what if? to broaden our minds.
IMO she is one of the great writers, and I read each of her works many times over. Some of these stories come from her Earthsea world, going back in time to a simpler life without technology, where wizardry is strong, IMO her Earthsea books are right up there with the best, a more human, gentle, believable world peopled with real characters without the endless wars and racism of Tolkien.
I really enjoyed Alyssa Bresnahan's narration of half of these stories, the other narrator was good but she was excellent.
So much to enjoy here, can't recommend enough. Timeless classics. Amazing value too.
My only complaint is that it is hard to navigate when some of the novellas are quite long and only are listed as a single chapter, that is a technical problem and could be fixed.
5 stars from me!

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1 person found this helpful

Confusing, weird.

Listening to them, I found the stories confusing and interesting. By the time I finished, I couldn't see the points.

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