Review: The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I kinda wish I hadn't been exposed to anything about this book before reading it, because what I did hear set my expectations in a bit of a different place from where this turned out to be. And with that said, maybe take that as a precaution before reading further into this review haha.

A lot is made of Le Guin's unique take on gender with her androgynous except sometimes-male/sometimes-female alien species, and while that is a major focus of the book, the subject doesn't exactly come up right away. The more immediate focus is on our Earth-based narrator's attempt to reach out to these people in the first place and the complications that arise, in ways that strike me the same way a Star Trek episode would. The ambiguous gender relationships factor more significantly in the second half, and even then a large part of the focus is more on our human inability to fully relate to these people. At the end of the day, it's about us.

While there technically is some action, most of the real story here is introspective in nature, with myths and other background stories interspersed between chapters to make you ponder on things a bit further. I found myself zoning out a couple of times ironically during the actual main plot chapters when the occasional description of manual labor and land travel came up, and consequently was a bit disappointed when the book finally ended.

For such an introspective book, I felt like there could've been even more interesting exploration of the ideas presented, had it not been as caught up in the more physical/day-to-day details of life on Gethen, as well as the narrator's own (author-imposed) limitations in understanding-- but I get that Le Guin is trying to craft a believable whole other world here. Or maybe it's just that the story ended sooner than I expected it to, just as I was starting to get really invested in understanding the particulars of this other society.

All in all, definitely worth reading for the concept. But try to stay for the experience, as limited as it may be.