A gift with great power

Powers, Ursula K. LeGuin

Powers is the third book in Le Guin's Annals of the Western Shore series, following Gifts and Voices. Like the previous novels in the series, Powers features a young protagonist with a special gift or ability who must find a way out of an oppressive situation.

In this novel, the protagonist is Gavir, a slave who has the ability to see (or, as he puts it, "remember") future events, but without context – he may know that something will happen, but not necessarily when or where. At the outset of the novel, Gavir – taken, along with his sister, as a slave when very young – is content with his life. He is owned by a good household, where slaves are treated well; he has been taught to read and write – his greatest delight – and is being trained to take on a role of scholar and teacher within the household when he is older. It hardly occurs to him that he is property and that chance or whim can change everything until he is brought painfully and violently to this realisation – and manages to escape during a period of war when the city of his masters is invaded.

After experiencing life as a rebel, and then finding his own people and discovering that he is unhappy living as his people have always lived, he embarks on a quest for his true home, a place where he can be himself.

Again, LeGuin weaves together themes of finding one’s place and one’s voice, learning how to live with one’s gifts without abusing them, speaking truth to power, and resisting oppression from the heart, mind and soul rather than with violence.

These tales are simply told, yet complex and profound, masterworks of craft imbued with the accumulated wisdom of someone who has observed and thought and felt deeply throughout her entire life.