Cath asked:

Which is the best order to read the books, the internal chronology of the series or by date of publication?

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10 years ago
4 answers

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Sarah left GR Here's what the author had to say about it:

http://www.ursulakleguinarchive.com/F...

Although I read The Left Hand of Darkness first and thought it was a standalone, so... reader's choice.

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Chloe I've been reading them in the order in which they were organized in the collection I got from the library: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, Left Hand of Darkness, and currently The Dispossessed. They're designed not to be read strictly as a series but as a shared universe, and I enjoyed that in this order I felt both that I had some background for places and concepts mentioned in later books and that I was learning about them more in-depth later, like a prequel. Each book can definitely stand alone and reading the others only allows you to explore a different facet of the universe. I thought that all of the concepts that are shared between books (i.e. FTL travel, the Hainish seeding of other worlds, mindspeech, the ansible) were all easy enough for a mature reader to infer or pick up on. Anyway, this is a long-winded way to say that you should read first whichever book piques your interest the most and follow up with the others depending on how curious you are about playing in the sandbox the author created.

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Jordan Lombard I don't know how helpful this will be, but I read The Left Hand of Darkness on its own without realizing there were other books that went with it and it felt like a standalone novel to me. I still haven't read the others.

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