#27 in Short stories
The Wind's Twelve Quarters
- 320
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- Locus Award for Best Collection
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Our view
“The Wind’s Twelve Quarters” gathers seventeen of Le Guin’s stories, and at its best it is short speculative fiction of the highest order. Several look ahead to her novels, with two set in Earthsea and at least four in the Hainish universe. Readers find it uneven, and some judge the earliest pieces clearly weaker than the rest. It belongs with readers who already love her novels and want to trace where they began.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of short stories by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, titled after a line from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and first published by Harper & Row in 1975. A retrospective of Le Guin's short stories, it collects 17 previously published pieces of speculative fiction. Four of these were the germs of novels that she wrote later, and a few others shared connections to her novels. At least four stories are set in the Hainish Universe, and two others in Earthsea. Many stories share themes and motifs, including time and utopia; certain images and characters also recur, including isolated scholars or explorers seeking knowledge in a hostile world.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.2 across 56 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 28% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Short stories average of 7.8. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 9 | 16% |
| Hardcover | 8.2 | 47 | 84% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Wind's Twelve Quarters?
It has 320 pages — shorter than 76% of the ranked books in Short stories.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Short stories — with scores between 7.8 and 8.4, closest to this book.
