Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

30 reviews

madamenovelist's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Slavery, Religious bigotry, Blood, Trafficking, Suicidal thoughts, Misogyny, Vomit, Excrement, Sexual harassment, Pregnancy, Incest, Grief, and Gore

Moderate: Confinement, Addiction, and Child death

katconig's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I can't help but feel like this book would be eaten alive by much of the online book community if it were published today. It uses he as a gender neutral pronoun in a book deconstructing gender socialization and one of the two POV characters is a misogynist who cannot fathom associating "feminine" with anything valuable. This alone seems enough for many to write it off completely. And yet it is the exploration of the nuances of these imperfections that make the book so incredible. Genly's misogyny is precisely what foils him from making progress in his mission, and ultimately puts not only his mission but life at risk. The book uses he as the gender neutral because Genly is the one translating. 

Reading this book made me wonder what other valuable explorations we might miss out on in favor of demanding perfection.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence

Minor: Misogyny, Death, and Incest

hanyas's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: War, Sexism, and Violence

Minor: Pregnancy

idajoh's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

At some point I thought it contained somewhat of an internalised mysoginistic tone, however, I think it was mostly the voice of the main character, rather than the authors opinion

Overall, a very good read where you are taken to a vast world in outer space

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Excrement, and Vomit

Moderate: Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicide, Violence, Animal death, Death, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Gun violence, Incest, Trafficking, and Vomit

featherwoman's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Confinement

Moderate: Incest and Violence

pastelkerstin's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book took a while to get interesting, but once it did, I found it hard to put down.

At its core there are some pretty good radical ideas in here about favouring community over patriotism. Genly speaks of a world based on cooperation and without law enforcement out among the stars. What a vision.

Gender and sex is also obviously a big topic in this book. I think it shows the arbitrariness of gender roles well, even though Genly and the other Envoys struggle with understanding this, as they come from a binarist society. Genly often makes sexist comments about manly or womanly qualities he sees in the Gethenians, people who are neither men nor women (or who are both, depending how you want to see it). But I don't think that means that the reader is supposed to agree with Genly. Seeing whatever a main character says as correct is a misguided way of reading fiction, in my opinion.
That's also why when Genly's interior monologue says that sexual desire/attraction is people's driving force (a very Freudian idea) and a requirement for being human, and therefore the Gethenians with their sexual cycle seem strange and inhuman to him, I think we're not supposed to think he's right. After all,

Genly learns to see Therem fully, as not fitting into Genly's ideas of sexuality and gender, but as a full human being, despite these differences.

There is the implication here that asexuality either doesn't exist on the other planets or that Genly isn't aware of it. So I would put an aphobia warning on this just in case, because reading "no sexual attraction = inhuman" stings even if you know that Genly struggles to see past his own experience of the world.

I think Genly and Therem's relationship is the most interesting part of this book. And it feels very queer to me, even though

they are never officially together

and Gethen doesn't seem to have a concept of queerness (unlike Genly's homeworld).

Overall, I liked this book, even though it has some elements that are a bit squicky or hard to read for me, like the way incest is tolerated on Gethen under certain circumstances and how this is part of one the main characters' backstories, or the aforementioned sexism and (almost certainly unintentional) asexual erasure from Genly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Confinement, Death, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Gun violence, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Violence, Vomit, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Acephobia/Arophobia, Body shaming, Child death, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Torture

Minor: Infertility, Suicide, Ableism, and Homophobia

troisha's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Death

Moderate: Grief, Gun violence, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Violence, and Xenophobia

Minor: Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Body shaming, Pregnancy, and Suicide

miriamana's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gun violence, Violence, and Death

Minor: Sexual content, Sexism, and Torture

readerette's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm glad I read the afterword in this book, as it called to my attention the benefit of some of the things I disliked, such as the main human character using "he" as a neutral pronoun and seemingly finding every opportunity to disrespect "feminine" characteristics in a gender-neutral world. Turns out that Le Guin later regretted using "he" as gender-neutral, and that on inspection, the main character is not as progressive as he likes to think he is, with his gender bias proving that out.

What I enjoyed regardless was the poetic definition of this new world so different from ours and so much the same. I also liked the relationship between Genly and Therem, which was appropriately complex and believable. Some parts were too slow or detailed for my taste so I did some skimming, but it was still wonderful world-building and sociological exploration.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Gun violence, Incest, Sexism, and Violence

valereads's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Left Hand of Darkness was a beautifully written character-driven novel filled with amazing prose and a fantastically realised world more reminiscent of a high quality fantasy novel that your typical sci-fi.

I loved the world this story was set it, it was original and felt truly real. I especially loved some of the short stories in between the main story chapters which told some stories from the world in which it was set and gave the whole thing more depth.

I shall definitely be rereading this book soon and I highly recommend it even (especially?) if science fiction isn’t typically your genre.

Content warnings: exorsexism, sexism, anti-intersex slur, abuse (specifically abuse of prisoners), incest

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Incest and Transphobia

Minor: Infertility