Reviews with content warning for Death - The Left Hand of Darkness

!!! MILD SPOILERS AHAID !!! I genuinely don't want to touch another book for a month. This book broke my heart in all the good ways a book can. Leaves you wanting for more, leaves you numb and speechless. It's the book I always needed. A sci fi story that challenges you. The reader and the protagonist are informed very early on what the outcome of the story will be, so it leaves you wondering about what truly, in my opinion, matters: What is love, what is gender, what is humanity? What makes us so different from the androgynous dwellers of Gethen? Why as a reader did it feel so natural to assign a gender to these genderless people, just as Genly Ai did, but why did I also feel then need to reprimand him and myself while doing so? Why as a person in real life do i do the same? I don't throw the word masterpiece around easily, but this is a treasure for sure.

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bakatan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad 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

4.5

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libellumartinae's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

3.75

Alrightie, this book was... intense. beautifully so, but I can't help but deny that partnering this book with another was a bad choice in my part that inevitably staunched my enjoyment of it. One of the things, in fact, I struggle with the most is a sort of initial confusion that didn't diminish throughout the reading experience as I tried to piece together the author's world. It's also true that as I have noted from other reviews not much happens throughout this book and this brought it to be a boring in some parts.

But gods! the whole architecture and meaning of this is utterly fabolous, alongside the knowledge that everything written is somehow already happened and you can see the echoes of it throughout the writing. An enchanting scifi reads.

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mixigod's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.5

An incredible philosophical science fiction for anyone looking to explore the social themes of science fiction that is often so easily overlooked in favour of lasers and space wars. Often, science fiction imparts our world's views, beliefs, and values onto alien societies but in The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin challenges this. We follow an envoy, Genly Ai, who is sent from a planetary union to appeal to a human-like planet - Winter, to join the union for benefits of cultural and economical trade. The planet is inhabited by ambisexual people, meaning that there is no set "man" or "woman", only sexual phases where one may be birthing or during children - either at random or willed with hormone replacement. This means their constructs of gender are completely, well, alien to Ai who must learn to navigate a society without gender constraints and unlearn his own beliefs coming from a society where gender is relatively fixed.

Le Guin's world building is robust and you believe that this planet truly exists, down to it's politics, ideas of love and sex, and the importance of certain values in the absence of fixed genders. We follow Ai as he attempts to navigate an alien world and learn to involve himself within its culture. There are critiques that the book may have benefited from gender neutral pronouns and that there's an absence of truly female characters but I believe that ties into the point discovered by Ai that he assumes masculinity of those he encounters, being a human male.

That's all I'll spoil of it, it's an incredible read and deeply moving. Great for those who want to ponder beyond science fiction in it's essential sense and think of what it means to be an alien society and how that challenges our own conventional norms.

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gilnean's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-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

4.25

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kemrick19's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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angorarabbit's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging 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

TLDR: A bit challenging, it needs a closer reading than many first contact sci-fi novels, but is worth the effort for the ideas and the writing.

Clarketech: Mind speech, near light speed space travel, ftl communications, Chabe stoves, cryosleep or hibernation during space flights.

Context: I loved what had been published in the Earthsea series in the late 1970’s so tried to read this then. Sadly, my head was too full of wizards and dragons for me to appreciate this gem. I am sorry I didn’t rectify my error before now.

I did have difficulty getting into the novel. The book is written first person singular with short hearth-tales, interspersed for the first quarter of the novel. Then a second voice is added. You then go back and forth between povs with the only indication being the context of the chapter..

Ms LeGuin does not hold your hand introducing you to this new world. While my edition did have a few helpful footnotes and a Gethenian Calendar and Clock addendum; there are many words are in the native languages with little to no explanation as to what an earth translation might be. It took me awhile to understand that Estraven was writing in a journal and that the strange words were dates.

I have read that there is some controversy over the use of the pronoun he to describe the inhabitants of Gethen. Ms LeGuin has appologized for this. I would point out that he was used instead of they in the US in the 1960’s The author has also acknowledged and apologised for the presumption that all Gethens were heterosexual . So much of the novel being Genly’s report, I don’t think there is enough information to judge how the Gethens actually felt about orientation. I would agree that Genly does appear to be homophobic or perhaps in denial over his own orientation, especially in the middle chapters.

I also wondered at Genly’s statement that very few women were known as mathematicians, composers, or inventors. He seems to be at a loss when talking about women at all and seems to be uncomfortable with what he sees as feminine characteristics. It seemed that the Ekumen would have an equal division of labour on its ships. In fact the first Ekumen off the ship in the last chapter is identified as female. One would also think that their first contact on a planet would be more comfortable with any gender.

There are many thoughtful and beautiful passages in the book and it is a great starting point to discussing gender and orientation. I did not see any passages that would be problematic for a tween to read. I would like to get the collected Hainish Cycle and read the novels and stories in sequence, plus reread this book.

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gardens_and_dragons's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

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

2.0

I really disliked this, unfortunately. I give it two stars because o can see why it was an important feminist science fiction novel in 1969. I can see how the exploration of gender, region and loyalty is important.

That being said, I found this to be extremely dry and boring during time where it should have felt tense. The pacing was slow, and that’s not something i usually enjoy in a book. I could not connect with the characters or enjoy their faults.

I also really did not like that it specifically envisioned a world where everyone is ambisexual AND then instead of being progressive about it, they also state that sibling incest is common and not forbidden. It had other potential issues that could have been called out with the Kenner system, but it was odd and felt … gross for no reason.

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