I finished my first book of 2026, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. This science fiction story, written in 1969, was a struggle for me to read. The struggle began with the strange, hard to pronounce so hard to remember names for the people, places and customs of the planet Gethen. But then, slogging through that, the story itself about a visitor from another planet (earth actually) acting as a representative of a confederacy of planets, the Ekumen, with a goal of getting Gethen to join the Ekumen left me cold. 'Cold' actually is a good word to use as Gethen has a climate much colder than earth and lots of words are expended throughout the book in describing the ice and the cold. The most unique aspect of the inhabitants of Gethen is they are androgynous – referred to as males but then a few days every month some 'become' (?) female and this is how the race propagates. This feature does not directly affect the plot (if you can call it a plot). If anyone else has read this book, what was your impression?
by JohnP112358
1 Comment
Yeah I had similar issues with it tbh. The worldbuilding is definitely impressive but LeGuin spent so much time on the gender stuff and climate descriptions that the actual story felt super thin. Like cool concept but where’s the plot lol
The names were brutal too, kept having to flip back to remember who was who