The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
As an opening shot in the era known as New Wave Science Fiction, it's not bad. As a novel you're trying to enjoy today, it doesn't hold up as well as Le Guin's other works. It spends so much time being art that it actually forgets it was supposed to be a book. Instead of worrying about plot and character, it plays out more like expanding on a concept that should have been confined to a short story. If you're like me, you hold Le Guin in very high regard, but that still doesn't mean I can give a full recommendation to this novel.
If you do decide to read Heaven, I would say that the first thing you need to do is research New Wave Science Fiction. The short version is that Harlan Ellison wrote stories that borderline on insane and it kicked off an entire genre in that fame. However, what Ellison did right was that he kept all those crazy concepts in short story form. They don't work as well when stretched out into a novel format. I'm the first person to say it's okay to be strange and not easy to understand, but I'm also the first to say that being strange doesn't automatically mean it's good.
Heaven just has too many problems with structure to make it enjoyable. Even though it's below average in length, it still takes too long to really get started. Also, the inherent flaw of the concept means the narrative has to world build over and over again. It's intriguing on a certain level, but it also creates a lack of investment. How do you care about a world that's just going to change by the next chapter? That's just it, you don't.
If you haven't read anything from Le Guin or New Wave before, you should certainly not start here. While well-received in its time, both Le Guin and New Wave has much better works for you to do a deep dive on. If you've already built a shrine around your copy of "Left Hand of Darkness" then this book might be an interesting read even if it doesn't satisfy like you would normally want a novel to do so.
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