Slow start, but strong finish. ( )

It's interesting to read this series starting with Rocannon's world, Le Guin's first novel, and contains a fairly conventional central conceit, and read this third installment in this loose series and see how much the prolific writer progressed in just a year of publishing. City of Illusions is well placed in the series in combining two elements of the previous novels; the hero's journey of Falk, and the mysteriously alien interacting with the comparatively primitive. This is then combined with the unique twist of City of Illusions, and the dance the author plays with both the protaganist and the reader with the interplay between truth and deceit. This is of course uncomfortable to read, especially compared to the straightforwardness of the previous novesl, but I almost wish she'd gone the full nine yards and left the story ambiguous with its relation to the greater universe and of the relationship between the reasder and the books. As it stands it is a great addition to the cycle, as usual, Le Guin's ability to establish charaters so quickly and effectively while curating this facsinating sci-fi/fantasy world is what elevates her as one of the great writers of her genre.

City of Illusions feels like it has two main sections, one much cleverer than the other. The majority of the novel is Falk's journey west, which reprises a lot of such journeys west and doesn't feel particularly engaging. Many of the events along the way don't seem to add a ton to the narrative besides giving us more time with Falk himself. The payoff comes at the culmination of the novel, where upon reaching the City Es Toch, we find that Falk is an alien from another world that sent an expedition to Earth. He has had his prior memory erased, and upon recovering it must navigate the hostile city while combining the two experiences. This is a compelling conceit, touching on questions of the sense of self and the nature of truth. I'm also intrigued by the barebones skeleton of how the League of All Worlds fell to the Shing, an enemy whose ability to lie appears to be their sole advantage. I haven't read much in the way of space war, so thinking about how an ansible-connected galactic civilisation could crumble is fascinating. I love that the Hainish universe is able to provide a setting for all sorts of different stories, including this one. ( )

If you liked The Left Hand of Darkness, read Planet of Exile! If you liked Planet of Exile, read City of Illusions. ( )

A man—with unusual cat-like eyes—awakes in a strange place, not knowing who he is, where he‘s from, or where he‘s at. A kind family “adopts” him and teaches him the ways of their unusual world. It turns out to be a dystopian USA, with tribes, many violent, & one feared by all others. He goes on a journey to try to learn who he is & ends up in the city ruled by the most feared tribe. But they are so so nice to him. He feels, though, the kindness and offers to return his memories are actually deceptions. I found his journey to the city tedious, but once there, his self-discovery is very interesting. It‘s somewhat hard sci-fi so not my genre and not an author I‘m inclined to read again. But the story was interesting and I‘m glad I finally tried something by this author. ( )

The best so far of the series. Not perfect, but excellent. It certainly makes me look forward to the continuation of the Hainish cycle. City of Illusions has complex, interesting characters (or at least characters that you suspect might be interesting), and a story that doubles back on itself and already shows glimmers of Le Guin’s tendency to revisit her old or earlier ideas and reconsider them. Taoism pops up here in full force, and there are some interesting philosophical ideas to consider about the nature of Truth.
( )

A science fiction novel published in 1967 and early in the career of acclaimed author Ursula K Le Guin. The novel received little critical attention when published and I picked it up only because of its publication date ( my own category of science fiction novels from 1967). I thoroughly enjoyed the read and it took me back in time to the excitement of reading science fiction as a teenager.

The story starts with a humanoid figure crawling through a forest and finally coming across a clearing whereupon it stands up on two legs and is noticed by a young woman (Parth) working in the fields. Parth goes over to him and leads him into the small community; they call him Falk and Zove a father figure of the community with the help of Parth help to educate him. Falk's mind has been wiped clean, but his intelligence enables him to learn the ways of the community and become a useful member. He learns that the world is made up of small communities separated by immense forests and that the inhabitants have been subjugated by the Shing an alien species. The scattered communities are left to their own devices as long as they do not band together and threaten the aliens. After a four year period Falk feels the need to travel, to visit the city of Es-Toch which people of the forest commune have heard speak. The first part of the book describes Falk's adventures as his path westwards leads him to various other settlements and many hostile encounters. He meets Estrel a woman captured by a nomad tribe on the great plains. They escape together and she leads him to Es-Toch the home of the Shing and where Falk feels he will meet his destiny. The second part of the book details Falk's struggles against the Shing who were responsible for wiping his mind and who now hold open the option of restoring his other self.

The novel therefore falls into two distinct parts, the first a dangerous journey through a hostile environment, which is America after the Alien conquest and the second part is Falk's mind games with the aliens themselves. They are both voyages of discovery for Falk and the reader and the mystery of Falk is revealed carefully by Le Guin. There is mystery and imagination throughout, although the final battle with the aliens is perhaps oversimplified to ensure the reader is not left behind. Le Guin's writing is a cut above much of the pulp science fiction of the era and she handles the adventure story well enough. She imparts that sense of wonder that keeps the pages turning and the resolution is satisfying. Themes of identification and truth telling in City of Illusions add another layer and so a 4 star read. ( )

Reading this taught me one thing: Even your favorite author can write boring books. The first half felt like a loosely connected series of misadventures in a winter wasteland (I swear Ursula has a thing for winter adventures), and the second half was some sort of mind game that ends with the author trolling the reader. Well, I'm still glad I read it once. ( )

The last of the initial three Hainish novellas, this book follows semi-directly from Planet of Exile and is best read after it. In many ways it is my favorite of the three, though I think that it creates a less cohesive or consistent story than Rocannon's World. But I loved the sun-powered looms, the speaking animals, the patterning frames, the translucent towers, the way that the book tackles the idea of self and truth and the "reverence for life" in disturbing and revealing ways. My favorite part of the book, though, may be just the initial passage of the nameless wordless Falk running through the forest.

As with most all of Le Guin's writing, the treatment of women leaves something to be desired. Le Guin herself has talked about how she struggled to move away from the idea of men being the center of the story in fiction. Estrel is an interesting character, but definitely peripheral to Falk's story, and falls into many of the usual tropes of being the "woman character" of the book.

By the way, I wonder if China Mieville's Embassytown ways directly influenced by City of Illusions. It certainly feels like a spiritual successor at least-- Ariekei Language and how it precludes or creates lies inEmbassytown remind me a lot of how lying in mindspeech is handled in this book. ( )

The last of the three early works that are loosely grouped together. It has distant ties to Planet of Exile. On a far future Earth, a man comes out of the forest with strange eyes and no memory. The small isolated community cares for him until he is ready to seek his identity on a journey across the continent. He meets with extremes of kindness and cruelty as his trip becomes more and more like a strange hallucination. His character, in itself, is less interesting than the adventure. (June 10, 2005) ( )

**City of Illusions** is part of the **Heinish Cycle**, and a good one (3.5) at that! This book starts out slow, and then meanders, and then reaches a pretty good ending – that is cut way too short, in my opinion. As is common with Ursula K. le Guin, we see the protagonist on a not-quite-intentional journey. The large time gaps in the beginning helped to keep the story moving, and made me feel invested in the protagonist's search for his past, without feeling that I was just seeing a common trope. The resolution was typical of le Guin, who rarely shies away from difficult discussions and decisions.
If only the ending hadn't been so short! I'd love to read a book on the last 20% of the story plus what came after. ( )

A man with amnesia appears in the forest but his eyes are not human eyes. The forest people took him in and taught him everything they know but he wants or needs to find out about his past. So he sets out for Es Toch, the City of the Shing. ( )

LeGuin is quite a writer. She takes the reader on a journey of discovery that plumbs the depths of the human condition while exploring the meaning of 'truth'. When someone tells you they are a liar, are they lying or telling you true? This is at the crux of the dilemma in which Falk, our protagonist, finds himself. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance and every action or reaction seems to lead toward disaster. The storylines of the preceding two Hainish Cycle books also dovetail nicely into this one. ( )

Best book by Le Guin yet. At least as good as left Hand of Darkness a post-galactic empire apocolyptic earth. The hero moves from barnarism to futuristic city across a modified North American Landscape. Enough hints at localities and references to the Hainish cycle all in a coherent and philosophocal read. Very enjoyable. ( )

"City of Illusions" follows Le Guin's "Planet of Exile." This is almost like two different books patched together. I really liked the first half of the book. It is set in a dystopian future of earth, at least 1,000 years in the future and probably several thousand. Human settlements are small and widely scattered. There are reasons for this which the reader is told, but we really don't understand. Much of history has been lost. Much has been preserved. Some of it may be not a true history. There is a big mystery here. The first half of the book is primarily a journey across the North American continent of the future and how it has reverted and the odd settlements and peoples that live sparsely across it. We follow a man named Falk who is in search of his own personal history in the far west. Exactly where I was never sure. Somewhere past the Rockies and before California. California is no more, apparently now only remnant islands with flooded valleys post-earthquake. The second half of the book takes place after Falk arrives at the place he sought, "Es Toch."

I was caught off guard by what is revealed in the second half of the novel. I as the reader certainly knew something was up and we are given clues, but the big reveal still surprised me more than it should have. Although I enjoyed the latter half of the book and liked how it tied in to elements of the preceding novel, it didn't really have my interest like the early part of the novel did. Still, overall I liked this story and appreciate how the first three novels fit together here.

I probably liked this one the best of the first three novels ( )

While each books in the series has a similar tone, I feel this one is really well written and very intriguing. Exploring an unknown world while also exploring the relationship of power and illusion. The main protagonist is great and delves into personality being a creation of our experiences. While this is a series, so far all the books could be enjoyed as a stand alone book. ( )

A strange man with no memories is taken in by a rural community for years, until one day he decides he must travel west to find his past. The pacing is very uneven: pages slog by with nothing happening, and then suddenly in the middle of a sentence everything happens at once, and then you're back to slow and boring again. The concept was interesting, where you're never quite sure who the enemy is or if they even exist, but it was not one of Le Guin's best. ( )

An early LeGuin--I would not have believed she would publish such stereotyped characters. Seems to be preparation for Hainish novels. I picked it up because she is one of the authors I look for, but I'm not sure I'll keep it. ( )

Originally published at FanLit
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/city-of-illusions/

“You go to the place of the lie to find out the truth?”

Ursula K. Le Guin’s HAINISH CYCLE continues with City of Illusions, which I liked better than its predecessors, Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile. City of Illusions takes place on Earth sometimes in the far future after an alien invasion has killed off most of the people and has completely changed the Earth’s ecology, infrastructure, and geopolitical arrangement. There’s a large capital city run by an alien race called the Shing, but most of the humans are spread out and divided into small clusters in the hinterlands which have gone back to their natural state after Earth’s cities were destroyed. While there are futuristic technologies in the capital, the rest of the people live off the land without technological help and with only occasional glimpses of the advanced society that their ancestors knew before it decayed.

To prevent takeovers, the Shing do not allow the people to organize or even to communicate over long distances. If anyone attempts anything that threatens the government, they are arrested and, since the Shing do not allow the taking of human lives, they are “razed,” meaning their memories are wiped out. To keep humans subjugated, the Shing also use their powers to cast illusions and to lie with their minds, which is why their capitol city is called the City of Illusions.

Our story begins as a man with cat-like eyes wakes up in the wilderness and doesn’t know who or where he is. In fact, he doesn’t know anything — his mind is blank. His only potential clue is a gold ring he wears which tells him that he once belonged somewhere. When a wilderness family takes him in, they name him Falk and teach him how to be a man again (if he ever was a man — his eyes suggest at least some non-human genes). After several years, Falk decides to set out for the City of Illusions to find out who he is. Along the way he meets other types of people, experiences different cultures, and has some scary adventures. By the time he gets to the city, he has made a new life for himself, has made friends, has fallen in love, and has learned a lot about the world he lives in, but not any clues about himself.

When Falk meets the Shing in the City of Illusions, he discovers who he is, but he learns that he must choose between his old mostly unknown life and the new life he has been living for several years. He also learns that the aliens have a different story about what happened to Earth than the stories he has previously heard. It’s not easy to separate truth from lies or to know who can be trusted. Falk has some major dilemmas to resolve and some major choices to make.

The setting of City of Illusions — America’s ruined cities being gradually overtaken by forests — is appealing (reminds me of Gene Wolfe’s NEW SUN books) and so is Falk (especially when we find out who he is) who is developed better than the protagonists in the previous HAINISH CYCLE novels. It helps that Falk doesn’t need a backstory, so we’re not really expecting much there. Unfortunately, none of the other characters are particularly engaging and the villains seem inconsistent (e.g., their insistence that life is sacred doesn’t fit with their other beliefs and actions), but I enjoyed Falk’s travels and dilemmas nonetheless and I liked the ambiguous ending and how this story fills in some information we were left wondering about at the end of Planet of Exile. City of Illusions is short and fast-paced with Le Guin’s usual economy of words which I’ve always admired and which becomes more appreciated the more epic fantasy I read.

I listened to Blackstone Audio’s excellent production narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. City of Illusions refers to events that occurred in Planet of Exile and is sort of a sequel. It’s not necessary, but it’d be helpful to read that book first. ( )

This is one of Le Guin's lesser works, in my opinion. Set in a post-apocalyptic world and universe, where it's not the humans who are in charge, the premise is good. But the insights aren't very telling, and I'm not returning to this one. ( )

This is one of LeGuin's finest works. It is a cerebral puzzle of a story, part Wizard of Oz, part Man Who Fell to Earth. Set in a future Earth where mankind has been colonized and degraded by a parasitic alien race called the Shing, the book tells the story of Earth's last hope, a man who is only half human. LeGuin's style and themes are profoundly distinct. She is a genre writer that transcends her genre so completely you forget she is a genre writer. ( )

Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I had realized it was part of a series.... I didn't dislike it - as always, Le Guin has interesting ideas, good prose, and interesting characters. But I didn't really feel like the book had a point, which might be because I don't know the context of the series. ( )

http://onefinemess.rhinopanda.net/2013/08/29/book-review-city-of-illusions/ ( )

This was Ursula Le Guin's third novel, one of the books in her Hainish series that includes the famous Left Hand of Darkness. While I wouldn't rank this with that book or the first three Earthsea books, classics in science fiction and fantasy, this was the first that impressed me as more than routine. With her first novel, Rocannon's World, you could see her authorial voice and themes beginning to develop. Her first book seemed too much like Tolkien's Middle Earth overlayed with space opera though. In clever ways, but still pretty derivative. The second was still rather conventional--nothing radical in its ideas in the way of Left Hand of Darkness, but it was one where the planet's cosmology did do more to drive the plot.

City of Illusions is a direct sequel to Planet of Exile, though you don't know that at first. And this novel was more memorable, had more twists and turns that I didn't see coming, and delivered along the way a good adventure across a post-apocalyptic far-future America. I can also see her philosophy more to the fore in this book. Le Guin did a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and Taoism is said to imbue both Earthsea and her novel The Dispossessed. A passage in the Tao is key in this story, and we even meet a "Thurro-dowist" (follower of Thoreau of Walden Pond and Taoism.) So although I'd still say her great novels were still in her future, this is the one the first one I'd call a standout--well worth the read. ( )

The narrative could flow more smoothly, and the end is anti-climactic. But it plays with lots of fascinating ideas concerning anthropology, identity, epistemology, and ethics, all neatly entwined into a fairly straight-forward adventure story. Very cool. ( )