...there were no words. Yet it asked him what he wished. “I do not know,” the man said aloud in terror, but his set will answered silently for him: I will go south and find my enemy and destroy him. [loc. 1632]
Le Guin's first published novel (1966), and not nearly as distinctive or profound as her later work: it's more readable than a lot of mid-Sixties planetary romance, though, and there are traces of themes that would appear in her later novels, such as sacrifice and colonialism.
Rocannon is a 'middle-aged' (43!) ethnologist, who -- in the opening chapter, a variant of Le Guin's short story 'Semley's Necklace' -- encounters a beautiful alien woman who has been brought by dwarven Clayfolk to retrieve an heirloom from a museum. Semley's story ends when she returns to her world and discovers that her husband is dead and her daughter an old woman: though the journey took 'one night' for her, decades have passed. It's as though she's been taken to Fairyland, and Rocannon's subsequent journey to her world has many of the trappings of a fantasy novel: a quest with a varied group of companions, a gift that is also a curse, the realisation that one can't go home again.
The main narrative begins some years later, after Rocannon has travelled to Fomalhaut II (Semley's planet) to do a survey: a stealth attack has destroyed Rocannon's spaceship and killed the rest of his team. He is stranded, and he needs to get a message to the League of All Worlds to report the ship's destruction and the presence of the lightly-sketched Enemy. He travels south, accompanied by Semley's grandson Mogien, a couple of servants, and an elven Fiia given to prophesy: his technology is mistaken for magic, and he himself for the mythological 'Wanderer': he encounters monstrous winged creatures, rough piratical types, intelligent rodents and an unseen entity who bestows a double-edged gift. And then, when his mission is accomplished, the novel concludes in less than a page. Yes, it's a short novel (originally half an Ace Double), but the pacing is ... uneven.
I did enjoy reading this, despite Rocannon's single-note character. I liked the way that the world is shaped by Rocannon's own decision to put the planet in a kind of quarantine. "...after I met Lady Semley, I went to my people and said, what are we doing on this world we don’t know anything about? Why are we taking their money and pushing them about? What right have we?" [loc. 469] And I liked the occasional phrase that rang true, that reminded me of Le Guin's later work: "this world to which he had come a stranger across the gulfs of night" [loc. 843]
This was technically a reread, though very little felt at all familiar: I bought Rocannon's World for my father one Christmas in the ?1980s, and very likely devoured it pre-gifting. I inherited that paperback, too, and kept it until 2007. This time round I bought the compendium Worlds of Exile and Illusion, which contains Le Guin's first three novels: I'll get around to Planet of Exile and City of Illusions at some point...
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