The Left Hand of Darkness

I knew Ursula K LeGuin was seen as one of the top scifi/fantasy minds of the 20th century, but hadn't really read anything by her as an adult, so I was excited to give this a chance and was not disappointed. This genre always does best when it provides a mirror/comparison to our own world, and this certainly does that. It gets a lot of attention for its novelty around gender, and rightly so, especially for when it was published, but I appreciated it most for thinking about difference in general. How do we communicate/collaborate with others who are very different from us? How do we build trust and friendships? At its heart, the book feels almost like a platonic love story of two people who are very different from each other. There's an emotional heart of beauty and intimacy to the story, and it's one that everybody should give a chance.

This book was excellent, but not my taste.

Very interesting concepts and fascinating political maneuvering, but written in a largely inaccessible style for a significant part of the book. Le Guin introduces Gethenian concepts and doesn't explain them right away, leaving me very confused a lot of the time.

Cool concept, execution wasn't for me.

Looks like I finally found a LeGuin's book that's not overrated. About time.

I loved the overall narrative, the richness of the culture Genly is discovering and the slight alienness he experiences because while they are human... they are not quite human like him.

The “aliens” have amorphous gender but they are still people, humans left on icy planet and experimented on long time ago - they cycle through being man and woman once a month like a PMS, the rest of the time they are infertile and something in the middle. It is a fascinating idea and I'm glad the book was written in the 60's because today it would have several dozen preachy passages with LGBT metaphors and “THE MESSAGE” (read the word in Critical Drinker's voice for best effect). This way it was ideologically free and LeGuin simply went discovering what a culture like that would look like, which was, in a way, refreshing.

Two thirds of the book are spent in political match between two nations while Genly is trying to get at least one of them to enter Ekumen union of planets. He knows that if one agrees the rest will soon follow. But they don't believe or don't want to believe him for their own political sake. He came alone and while he looks weird to them and the spaceship is being analyzed he's still struggling against political forces that want to keep the power to themselves and fear joining galactic union would undermine their plans.

This part was good but not as good as the last third where Genly is forced to travel through icy plains with a native companion. I was quite surprised that this was the stuff I enjoyed the most. The bonding between them was the best part of the novel. I wouldn't say that LeGuin is in any way good with writing rich and complex characters but this part made me care about both of them.

I've rated only Wizard of Earthsea this high but this book was slightly better and it's not as highly praised as that one. So far Hainish Cycle was improving with (almost) every book and I hope this keeps going. LeGuin will never be among my favorite authors but at least I'm finally starting to understand why she is for many other people.

P.S.: China Miéville wrote introduction to this and it just solidified my opinion that I wouldn't enjoy his work. He doesn't understand Heinlein's ‘The door dilated' metaphor and misunderstands that LeGuin used masculine language for pregnant ‘king' because we have no other way to address a ruler that is most of the time sexless eunuch and turns into one of the sexes only for a day each month.