The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin

Humans from Earth, having stripped the planet of its natural resources, have come to colonise and cut down forests of another planet, Athshe. The native people of the planet are considered primitive and inferior, and are horribly exploited, enslaved and brutalised to the point that they're forced to abandon their peaceful nature and retaliate.

This book felt brutal and disorienting, especially as the point of view changed between the villain, an Athshean, and an anthropologist trying to defend them. It's a stark contrast to the Becky Chambers books I read in 2025, where space-travelling humans are careful to tread lightly even amongst non-sentient creatures.

The Word for World is Forest was a good one to follow up R F Kuang's Babel which has similar themes of colonisation. I also started reading Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, which quotes many British colonisers records of Aboriginal Australians they encountered on first coming to Australia, and have echoes of Captain Davidson's disdain.