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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

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bethriley's review against another edition

2.0

Reads like a scientific journal or a travel log, rather than a narrative story. I didn't care at all for the protagonist Genly Ai, except to be annoyed when he projected some stereotypically sexist comment about this or that behavior or movement seeming feminine or masculine, usually feminine. I'm not sure if I was supposed to be annoyed by his projections of sexist gender definitions or be fascinated by these enlightened observations. The only developed character was Estraven, who without this book would have been completely flat. This book was disappointing in expected poignancy and basic storytelling, but it was readable.

leer_amor's review against another edition

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4.5

this book can definitely be hard to get into because Le Guin throws you into an imaginary world and uses terms relevant to that world without explaining them to you. It’s also important to remember that this book was published in 1969 so while today it might not be something revolutionary, at the time the concepts presented in this book were something entirely new to the genre. She’s also a woman writing from a man’s perspective so when the main character makes sexist comments towards women, I dont believe it is Le Guin being sexist. (but im not totallt sure, obviously cant see into her mind) It is her showing how society as we know it was sexist at the time. what she’s really doing with this novel is showing the limitations of our perceptions of reality. The boxes that we place people in and our limited definitions of expression and gender and relationships.

this work is also part of a larger series, but the author has been quoted several times in saying that there is no particular order that you should read the Hainish series in and that while some of the characters within the books are interconnected each of the books within the series is its own individual story.

this is a dense but thoroughly enjoyable read. It’s not dramatic or flashy by any means and that was kind of nice. The one thing that is bumping it to 4.5 stars instead of 5 is that there was not a single woman character in the whole book. the people of this other planet that the main character travels to are all intersex and they don’t have or recognize binary genders. the main character, who is a guy, in his mind framed all of the people on the planet as men. There was not a single person that he definitively framed in his mind as a woman or consistently used she/her pronouns with. and I don’t know if this was just like an oversight by the author or if it was actually sexism. I’m willing to overlook it a little bit since this was published in 1969 and the audience that the author was targeting was not a largely female audience. That is also evident in her Earthsea series. but I’m wondering if some of this is due to an internalized sexism that the author herself has.