Book Review: The Word for World is Forest

Another of Ursula K. Le Guin’s poignant Hainish universe stories. Avatar, but better.

I hate that my first thought when reading this book was of James Cameron and his damnable smurfs. I hate the fact that I thought about those movies at all while reading Le Guin. It feels like a real disservice. Don’t get me wrong here, the Avatar movies are good fun, with great visuals and set pieces of course, and I thought the second one was better than the first. But let’s be honest, we don’t watch them for their poignancy. They have a message about colonialism and greed, sure, but they’re pretty blunt and simplistic with it. The Word for World is Forest stands in stark contrast however, adding a whole other layer with its intense despair at the cultural effects of mass violence—something which Avatar rather seems to revel in for the spectacle.

Blurb

When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.

Review

For all I said above, I felt like The Word for World is Forest is one of the most blunt of Le Guin’s works I’ve read so far. For instance, there is a far clearer distinction between good and evil here than in, say, The Dispossessed or in the Earthsea Cycle. But, being Le Guin, there is so much to unpack in such a relatively short book that I don’t think I could anywhere near do it justice in this review.

The blurb doesn’t make it particularly clear, but the reason for the comparison to the much later Avatar movies is quite simply that the plot itself is very similar. Earth has been depleted, and so humans invade another planet with an indigenous humanoid population in order to take its resources (here, wood). And in so doing antagonise, abuse and enslave the natives until they rise up against their human oppressors. However, The Word For World is Forest offers a commentary on the introduction of the concept of mass violence onto a formerly non-violent humanoid species. Unlike in Avatar, violence is not presented as the solution to the problem of human encroachment, but as an irreversible threat to the native culture. It feels very much like James Cameron took this book as one of his inspirations, but missed the point of the commentary.

The characters in this book have far less depth to them than in Le Guin’s previous works, aside from the native Selver. The exploration of the Athshean culture has all the complexity and depth of the other worlds in the Hainish universe. Instead, it’s the human characters that are treated more as caricatures - particularly the absolutely vile Captain Davidson, who represents all the worst aspects of the toxic masculine mindset. There’s racism (and not just towards the Athsheans - here disparagingly called “creechies”), mysogyny, dehumanisation, rape and murder. And where Davidson is far from the only perpetrator among the human colonists, he is the story’s main antagonist and vehicle for it all. The story also manages to divert away from the white saviour trope present in Avatar in the character of anthropologist, Raj Lyubov. Whereas he speaks up for the cause of the Athsheans, he is never seen as a saviour figure. Instead, Selver himself takes up that role—bringing the “evil dream” of mass violence forth into the real world.

Le Guin’s prose as usual is top-notch, and I particularly enjoy the way she is able to give all her character radically different voices. For a novella, the story is well-paced. I would have liked to have seen more of the emissaries of the League, and the NAFAL spaceship, though.

Overall, I very much enjoyed The Word for World is Forest, and won’t hesitate to continue my journey through my Hainish stories collection.