Kane
`The Left Hand of Darkness` was difficult to enjoy in a modern context. Being originally published in 1969 it was obviously at the forefront of science fiction and paved the way for the genre I love today; but, over 50 years later I don't think it holds up as a novel that anyone needs to read, unlike other classic science fiction.
The concepts introduced such as faster than light travel, and futuristic weapons are things we still enjoy in stories today. They are early examples of some exciting new concepts for the time and it was fun to think that they are still speculative concepts half a century later.
The prose and story though are what really let this book down. The prose in particular was VERY simplistic. Very little in the way of any narrative flourish - with most of the story told, not shown, and in very plain and straight forward language. The story itself also being extremely straight forward with very little actually happening in terms of a narrative. All the interest is intended to be derived from the unique new (at the time) concepts introduced but Ursula seems to forget that something actually needs to happen in the story for those concepts to become interesting.
The characters were also extremely uninteresting. As a reader who generally favours character driven narrative I just simply didn't really care about either of the main characters and still after reading don't really feel any attachment, or feel like I really know them at all. Towards the very end - one of the characters is gunned down in a speculated suicide and it had no emotional impact whatsoever.
Overall I can't recommend this book except as a reference to compare modern sci-fi to and understand how it has evolved (or not).
Originally posted at canberrabookclub.au.
`The Left Hand of Darkness` was difficult to enjoy in a modern context. Being originally published in 1969 it was obviously at the forefront of science fiction and paved the way for the genre I love today; but, over 50 years later I don't think it holds up as a novel that anyone needs to read, unlike other classic science fiction.
The concepts introduced such as faster than light travel, and futuristic weapons are things we still enjoy in stories today. They are early examples of some exciting new concepts for the time and it was fun to think that they are still speculative concepts half a century later.
The prose and story though are what really let this book down. The prose in particular was VERY simplistic. Very little in the way of any narrative flourish - with most of the story told, not shown, and in very plain and straight forward language. The story itself also being extremely straight forward with very little actually happening in terms of a narrative. All the interest is intended to be derived from the unique new (at the time) concepts introduced but Ursula seems to forget that something actually needs to happen in the story for those concepts to become interesting.
The characters were also extremely uninteresting. As a reader who generally favours character driven narrative I just simply didn't really care about either of the main characters and still after reading don't really feel any attachment, or feel like I really know them at all. Towards the very end - one of the characters is gunned down in a speculated suicide and it had no emotional impact whatsoever.
Overall I can't recommend this book except as a reference to compare modern sci-fi to and understand how it has evolved (or not).
Originally posted at canberrabookclub.au.