The Lathe of Heaven stands out from the rest of Le Guin's oeuvre, based on Earth and revolving around layers of uncertainty, in a way that calls to mind Philip K. Dick. Its a short book with a different kind of world-building than the Haimish Cycle or the Earthsea series, as the world is constantly reinvented through dreams. While the social and environmental observations are mostly astute (the climate change and plague pieces are eerily prescient for the 70s), you can also feel that this is early in Le Guin's career and lacking in some nuance.

Overall the philosophy of the book, which is rooted in Taoism, was intriguing, but the story didn't grab me like some of her others.