The Left Hand of Darkness

What I expected: Bomb ass classic SF

What I got: Cool alien fantasy treatise on the duality of man, the humanity that lies behind labels, and some badass second-wave feminism.

On paper I should have enjoyed this book more than I did though.

While Le Guin is a master of language, her word choice stunningly perfect, it seems she harbors an intense hatred for beauty in prose. The writing in TLHoD is utilitarian, spartan, and devoid of interesting dialogue or evocative description. The book is a giant exercise in telling and not showing, often completely glossing over potentially interesting scenes and hand waving past important plot points.

For a feminist author she sure loves to refer to (most) masculine traits as intrinsically desirable and (all) feminine traits as repulsive. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe that it's because our reader surrogate is male. I would love to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she gives us no reason to. While Ai grows by the end, and sheds some of his intolerance, it's only for the ambisexuals. In fact near the end, after his trials, he complains again about the shrill sound women make when they speak. It feels tone-deaf.

Where she fails at weaving a well-paced cohesive narrative though, she succeeds in being inimitably quotable.

“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.”