The Beginning Place

Name: The Beginning Place
ISBN: 9780765346254

by Ursula K. Le Guin · first published 1980

3mentions

2recommended by

2HN commenters

2021–2026first – last mentioned

100% recommend

Fiction & Literature Fantasy Science Fiction

Fleeing from the monotony of his life, Hugh Rogers finds his way to "the beginning place"—a gateway to Tembreabrezi, an idyllic, unchanging world of eternal twilight. Irena Pannis was thirteen when she first found the beginning place. Now, seven years later, she has grown to know and love the gentle inhabitants of Tembreabrezi, or Mountaintown, and she sees Hugh as a trespasser. But then a monstrous shadow threatens to destroy Mountaintown, and Hugh and Irena join forces to seek it out. Along the way, they begin to fall in love. Are they on their way to a new beginning...or a fateful end

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ilamont · May 8, 2021 · Recommends

…get into #4. I've also enjoyed her short stories, including some of her later collections from the 1990s and 2000s. A book that is seldom on her "best of" lists but I think should be there IMHO: The Beginning Place. I first read it in the U.K. (with an alternate title, Threshold) but returned to it recently and it holds up in terms of the story and the scope of the strange world it describes. Not to mention the…
on “Ursula Le Guin Books” ↗
minnca · May 8, 2021 · Recommends

I think The Beginning Place is an underrated Le Guin book that didn't make the list! It's definitely not science fiction or even futuristic – more like fantasy plus magical realism – but I found the plot so unique and engaging.
on “Ursula Le Guin Books” ↗
ilamont · Feb 8, 2026 · Recommends

I grew up reading Earthsea but later discovered Threshold/The Beginning Place. Some of her short stories are very good, too.
on “Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin” ↗