Planet of Exile

Le Guin's next novel in the Hainish Cycle takes place at an indeterminate time after the events of Rocannon's World. Indeed, the mindspeech or telepathy of that former novel appears in Planet of Exile as a widespread power among descendants of humans who have been stranded on Werel for centuries. Fortunately, Le Guin sheds the fantasy tropes here to tell a story of exiled humans eventually adapting to and coming to a greater symbiosis with the less advanced humanoid natives. Predictably, Agat drops the sense of doomed exile, finding hope for humanity on Werel lies in their future relationships and crossbreeding with the locals, who, though human-like, are fair-skinned, technologically "primitive" and divided into various clans. 

Thus, through their centuries-long adaptation to their new environment and the overly long Winter season and attacks of the Gaal (inspired by the Huns or Central Asian steppe nomads?) invaders from the north, a "primitive" Other and the remnants of an advanced space-traveling people overcome their difference. While it is certainly romantic and perhaps utopian, the novel offers a realistic call for overcoming difference. After all, the survival of both human groups relies on their coming together to respond to natural and personal aggression. There is no suggestion of primitivism either, but simply human acclimatization to their harsh environment through collaboration. It almost brings to mind The Dispossessed and Annares. 

One can also find interesting insights into the commonalities of both populations and their rituals, practices, and reckoning of their past. After centuries on Werel, not knowing if the League of All Worlds survived, the descendants of those left on the planet rely on half-understood theories and records of their origins, forgetting the use of past technology like spaceships and aircars, and restricted by long-gone League protocol forbidding their technological influence on the native population. Indeed, it is after witnessing their troops defending their town settlement succumb to similar wounds as the natives that their doctor understands fully that they are now adapting to the planet. With a combination of the remnants of their technology and the local Tevarans, humanity will survive, expand, and, perhaps, one day bring the Gaal into the fold. All in all, this makes for an entertaining and worthwhile early novel from Le Guin.