He thinks there's a reset button: that people can die and start back at level one. He thinks Laura will walk through the door any minute now.

It is not easy to bring a Foucauldian understanding of historical contingency to high fantasy. The genre resists. Le Guin manages anyway.

The description of the feasts goes on for a while. There is pretty much everything you could want from a medieval shindig here: a whole fortnight of feasting, complete with jousts, drums and caroling, trumpets, banners, and beautifully dressed lords and ladies engaging in flirting and love play.

Part trilobite, part lungfish, / it crawls about the basalt seas / of the Mare Tranquillitatis