A review by dan2
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

adventurous challenging emotional reflective 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

4.5

started a bit boring, but got better with every chapter. the "folklore" chapters were really interesting. as someone who has never seen snow and cant imagine a glacier, this was a very wild read. the political plot isn't really my cup of tea, but the journey of genly through this alien world made me want to keep reading.

i adored the symbolism of the temperature and weather as a reflection of the story. in the very first scene, genly is hot and sweaty, but then he proceeds to spend the rest of the book absolutely freezing. EXCEPT when 

he is in a tent in a glacier with estraven... oh, estraven. i love them. i don't know why, but i do. 
i am absolutely in love and obsessed with the character dynamics between genly and estraven, because they're constrasting, opposite. where genly comes from a warm planet, estraven comes from a cold one. genly is naive and honest, estraven is reserved and calculistic. even the fact that genly is tall and estraven is short, genly is thin and estraven is chubby.
genly is banned from orgoryen, estraven is banned from karhide .
what makes this parallel even more powerful is that estraven was the only person in the planet who trusted genly, and estraven was the only person in the planet genly didn't trust.
and yet, they love each other.
estraven's death was devastating. i truly was not expecting it. i thought their death would mirror one of the myths, but it didnt, i think, which was a little disappointing.


character dynamics cannot get better than this!!!!! 

so many descriptions of snow and ice.... it's so interesting how central to the story the cold is.

also, something something "after the journey you cannot come home".... insane to think of a human from earth in an alien planet, hundreds of years after they were born......
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