No such reassurance rounds off The Word for World is Forest. The author’s sympathy is entirely with the enemy. The invaders from Earth are indisputably the bad guys and the rebellious natives are entirely in the right. But the novel’s revolutionary defeatism doesn’t fall into the trap of romanticising the revolt of the oppressed. The Athsheans are changed by the very act of fighting, new and strange to them; the world they win back is not the same as the world that was taken from them; and their fight is not fair, or discriminating, or by the rules. It is dirty and brutal and shocking.
