A great review of Le Guin's early work, and often full of the brilliant and sublime ideas she is so good at exploring, not to mention an incisive and sharp prose style, both poetic and subdued at the same time.

In particular, the story 'Those Who Walk Away of Omelas' is in this anthology, which might make it historic. A short parable, and possibly more famous in it's synopsis than the story itself, but it still packs an incredible punch. ( )

I'm a Le Guin diehard, and was powerfully moved by this collection. I'd recommend reading her books first, though. ( )

Good. The stories I enjoyed best were "April in Paris," "Nine Lives," and "Vaster than Empires and More Slow." ( )

Even her early stories are better than much of the field, so this Ursula K. Le Guin anthology is a joy, even if an uneven one. A couple of the stories here are weaker than others ("A Trip to the Head" reads more like a private writer's exercise), but there are some real winners. "April in Paris" is a lot of fun, "Nine Lives" is disturbing and profound, and "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" is brilliant; what these share is a focus on the psychological, on the inner course of human thought and existence. Really, the human inner life is what these stories are about.

And the final story, "The Day Before the Revolution," is very satisfying to me as it's a prefatory tale to her novel "The Dispossessed," my favorite of her novels, and because it peeks into the mind and life of the instigator of the revolution that produced the society of TD. Good stuff. ( )

It is always hard to rate a collection of stories as a whole. Most of the stories were good, a few I really liked, and a few others I just skipped ahead to the next story after a couple pages. So it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Usually when she stuck to science fiction settings or ideas I enjoyed them the most. The more contemporary stories often felt rambling or uninteresting. I did like the author's introductions to each story. They usually gave interesting context to the stories. ( )