"CIty of Illusions" by Ursula K. Le Guin

The third book in the Hainish cycle, and maybe the most ambitious one, many more characters, plots, subplots and even more unanswered questions left at the end. The book is very short, 160 pages, but intense. I wish she would write a part II to it.

The book starts when a naked human is found in the primordial forest of eastern united states in a very bleak future. The League of All Worlds is destroyed and the Earth ruled and the humans kept in perpetual savagery by the "Shing", an alien race from the depths of the Galaxy, far beyond the limits of the League. They have the ability to lie in MindSpeach, i.e. to mindlie, which is considered absolutely impossible by all the people of the League, which leads to their downfall as the Shing infiltrate them (they look similar to humans) and destroy them.

Falk (yellow), as the naked man is called by the forest people, has no memory of who he is or where he comes from (he's in his 20s) and the people living in the forest, in 'Houses' or individual settlements of about 5-50 people, take him in and teach him to speak Galaktika, and about the Earth and the Shing. Falk looks exactly like human except for his yellow eyes with huge black pupils and no iris. After 5 years the master of the house sends Falk to find his destiny as he hopes that Falk is emissary from another planet which can help the Earth humans free themselves from the Shing.

Falk travels west by foot, to find the city of Es-Toch, which is the only city remaining on earth, ruled by the Shing, and which is built on the edges of the Grand Canyon and across it. He goes through many misfortunes. Angry, scared people are everywhere and everybody is afraid of the Shing. Some have kept much of the technology of the League, while others have fallen into utter savagery like the Prarie nation of Basnasska, while others live in imaginary constructs like the King of Kansas. Falk is helped by a woman, Estrelle, who claims to be a wonderer, and leads him to Es-Toch. However once there she betrays him to the Shing.

The Shing want to give Falk his previous personality, which they themselves mind-razed together with all the crew of the Alterra space ship, because they want to know they coordinates of Alterra, either to destroy it or to persuade the Alterrans that they Shing are humans, who invented the story of the Enemy to unite the different humans who were engaged in interstellar civil war when the League was corrupted. This is the story they tell to Falk and tell him that the price of restoring his previous personality, Prince Ramarren, is that his current personality must be destroyed.

Falk mistrusts them, and senses they are lying, but goes through with it. Unbeknown to the Shing he keeps both personalities and eventually unites them. As Ramarren he has superior mental powers and can tell when the Shing are mindlying, which is probably why the Shing mindrazed all the crew on Alterra. The Alterrans have developed and perfected the techniques of mindguarding much above the League or even the Shing. Falk-Ramarren pretends everything is ok until at a good moment puts one of the three Shing on earth under mind-control and goes to the space ship prepared for his and Orri's travel (though he knows he is to be killed as soon as he gives the coordinates, and only Orri is to return to Altera with the story the Shing implanted in him).

On the ship his suspicions are confirmed. The controls and mathematics on the ship is not Cetian, which is the common math for all League worlds, but thoroughly alien. He finally succeeds and the ship takes off for Alterra, with him, Orri and the Shing Ken inside. Here the book ends abruptly and leaves you yearning for more, however Le Guin never explains what happened, and the Shing are never explained again in any further book beyond what is already mentioned in the 'City of Illusions'. Very unnerving! In the next book 'The left hand of Darkness' the 'Age of the Enemy' is 600 years behind, and the main character remembers it as a dark and cruel age, but no explanation is given as to how it ended, how were the Shing defeated and who or what the Shing were in the first place.

The book is very dynamic, becoming even more so towards the end and reads like thriller or adventure novel. Le Guin's theme of high technology being of not much help and very easy to lose or forget is present everywhere. Many of the humans remaining on earth have either digressed to savagery or intentionally limit the use of high technology to minimum. Savages with spears and axes regularly beat up and capture Falk though he has laser gun with him. The Shing make extensive use of high technology but it brings them no happiness or safety, they are constantly afraid of being exposed, overthrown or killed, which is their largest fear, from which they instituted their only law that life must not be destroyed. That's why they mindraze their enemies instead of killing them and leave them to die in the wilderness, and also eat only vegetarian food, well masked with complex spices.