Last year the first Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for fiction was given out. Since I’m a huge fan of Le Guin and am always looking for more literature in her fashion, I decided to read all the shortlisted works. This turned out to be an excellent decision: it was a varied, impressive list and I ended up loving most of them. Most importantly, they \*are\* indeed the kind of book fans of Le Guin would enjoy reading.
I figured it’s a nice tradition to continue! With only around 3 to 4 hours to go for the announcement of the winner, here’s my personal ranking of this year’s nominees. I found it to be an even stronger year so far, if a bit more polarizing for me. There’s one DNF and two works I didn’t much care for, but the other six I really, really loved.
**9. Zain Khalid – Brother Alive (DNF)**
I tried, I really did. Two attempts with lots of time inbetween but I stopped early on each time. This is definitely the most “literary” of the nominees, mostly dwelling on religion. I like the concept. I enjoy the writing. But something keeps me from reading it, not allowing me to give it its full attention, and I consistently fail to continue. It’s a DNF for now, I’m afraid, though I \*do\* want to give it a third try at some point.
**8. R.B. Lemberg – Geometries of Belonging (****★★★****)**
“We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill.”
Everybody is broken in Lemberg’s Birdverse, and no book showcases this more than GEOMETRIES OF BELONGING. Most people in these stories and poems very much don’t belong in their world. Gender and linguistics have always played a prominent role in the Birdverse stories but it felt most explicit here. Lemberg does unique stuff with the genre that I can only be astonished by and respect.
And yet… There’s always something off about their style, making it a chore to read, as much as I want to love it. I had this problem with THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES (where I was reading it and didn’t very much understand any of it) and found THE UNBALANCING to be more readable, but I once again had to power through it. A shame, because Lemberg seems like they should be one of my favourite writers.
**7. Rebecca Campbell – Arboreality (****★★★****)**
Stelliform Press is probably one of my favorite small presses of the moment, focusing on cli-fi and often highlighting hope in even the darkest moments. They had an excellent book in last year’s shortlist with “After the dragons”. Arboreality feels like a bit of an atypical release in their recent publication history; it feels decidedly darker (near apocalyptic) and sometimes behaving more like a collection of short stories than an actual novella.
It’s a multigeneration story of survival packed into 120-something pages. People will often complain about novellas being too \*short\*, but I usually tend to disagree- most novellas are a perfect length, the format doing wonders for the story being told. Here I finally find myself agreeing. Apparently, this is based on a short story. I probably would’ve preferred reading either the short story or an even more expanded version of it, into a full-length novel. This novella, while fascinating, felt incomplete.
**6. Christiane M. Andrews – Wolfish (****★★★★****)**
A delightful and well-written re-telling of the Romulus and Remus story. I liked it enough at the beginning, but about halfway through something clicked that made me love it. Yes; this is reminiscent of Le Guin. A simple story hiding much behind it, compact prose revealing beauties. An almost mythological feeling, myth turned into story. Lovely stuff.
**5. Yuri Herrera – Ten Planets (****★★★★****)**
A collection of mostly flash fiction exploring various speculative ideas. Reminiscent of Stanislaw Lem both in prose, style and themes (alienation, high-concept short stories, language). I liked this most for its often unusual stories. Probably my favorite work by Yuri Herrera!
**4. Akil Kumarasamy – Meet Us by the Roaring Sea** **(****★★★★★****)**
A lyrical, experimental work with stunning second person stream-of-consciousness. Endlessly fascinating, if not always comprehensible. Reads like a poem, feels like a dream. This is one of those rare SF/literary stream-of-consciousness blends done well.
**3. Yvette Lisa Ndlovu – Drinking from Graveyard Wells (****★★★★★****)**
Drinking from graveyard wells is an angry and honestly depressing collection. Vengeful spirits who get stuck on the injustices of their lives, the classic Western way of stealing someone’s culture and turning it into something that makes a profit, people who have to pay a very high price indeed to become citizens…
This is a dark collection, filled with rage. It contains fables, mythological stories, magical realism, horror, and all other kinds of stories and flash fiction. Highly recommended.
**2. Simon Jimenez – The Spear Cuts Through Water (****★★★★★****)**
This has turned out to be a bit of a polarizing work, but I loved it. It’s a \*brilliantly\* lyrical, mythopoeic tale filled with interesting ideas and exemplifying the spirit of Ursula K. Le Guin. Loved the narrative style, the prose, the characters, and sheer imagination. Not for everyone though.
**1. Nicola Griffith – Spear (****★★★★★****)**
I read this book the week it came out and found it to be an extremely rewarding read. Much has been said about it before me.
I went to a convention the same year where I attended a panel on the Arthuriana. Topics of discussion were the current relevancy of the Arthurian tales, its place in our current society, and its legacy in popular media. Most of the panelists noted that it feels like our generation hasn’t really had their version of Arthur yet.
And I agree with this, to some extent. Especially in popular media, as with most subjects re-visited often by Hollywood, little new things are actually being said. I immediately thought of a book, however- “Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices”, an anthology I have not yet actually read but which came out about some time ago and is filled with stories retelling the lore surrounding King Arthur, often gender-bent, race-ben, queerified or in some way inclusive that Arthurian tales previously weren’t very often.
It’s a good collection, from what I’ve heard, though I have not yet read it. What’s the link with this book? Spear was originally commissioned as a short story for that anthology, but it quickly grew into something much bigger, and a year after it was supposed to have been published in Sword Stone Table it released as this instead.
All the better for it. Spear is a wonderful tale, and if it’s an indicator of what the other stories in Sword Stone Table are like I’ll be very keen to read that. Griffith manages to use the familiar threads of Arthurian mythology in a way that feels refreshing- you catch glimpses of the original story, names that feel familiar, concepts that are as old as the stories themselves. But this story feels like a different tale- a story before the stories, Griffith’s new take on a household world.
It’s a mythic story, poetic and lyrical, with wonderful and honestly impressive genderqueer character development subtly interwoven. It feels so effortlessly done.
One of my absolute favorites of 2022, and it would be a deserved winner of the Le Guin Prize!
**Conclusion**
Another great shortlist and I would heartily accept any of my top six picks receiving the prize. Once again, I found the picks to be varied and of good taste, in the spirit of Le Guin. I can only hope they keep giving this one out for the foreseeable future, because I’m already looking forward to the next one!
by goranlowie