The Telling Ursula K. Le Guin 2000

Another damned "Hainish/Ekumen" novel from Le Guin. This story trope bothers me because every time I start one of these, I get about 40 pages in and I'm starting to enjoy the book. She's created another world full of realistic, multi-dimensional characters. Then she starts with the danged Ekumen and the fall of Terra and I'm now about 90 pages in- it's a 264 page book with big type, so this is not a huge investment- but I'm following the seductive and mysterious story so I don't really want to stop.

If you haven't read any Ekumen/Hain stories: the Hains are the most boring race of beings in the universe. Starting millions of years ago, they dedicated their race to visiting planets across the universe, making contact and trading with the few civilizations they found, gene-enhanced the animals and plants they found on other worlds, leaving bacteria on barren worlds to become life; then they started coming back to planets previously visited to observe the civilizations they created; these observers are Hains or other races, sent as members of the unreligion/religion, the Ekumen. The Ekumen observers copy what they can and bring back unbiased reports on the planets' culture. These observations almost always end with unauthorized sharing of technology with a observed race, and eventual destabilization in the civilization and destruction of native culture.

Terra--politically recognizable as projection of Earth around 2060- is of course a Hain project and guess what? We look like the Hains a lot more than the other aliens. Yay us. However, much of the tension in the Ekumen/Hain books involves Terran people working for the Ekumen, being asked to proselytize to (likely) Hain-enhanced humanoid people on other worlds in order to destroy/protect the native culture.

Anyway, back to The Telling. The characters go on being compelling and eventually the secret gets revealed, but the ambiguity in the denouement isn't nearly as exciting as she wishes it were. I can't tell if this book is supposed to have a sequel or not. I hope I do not stumble across one because I will feel compelled to get it to find out what happens to the characters.