The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

Looks like I finally found a LeGuin's book that's not overrated. About time.

I loved the overall narrative, the richness of the culture Genly is discovering and the slight alienness he experiences because while they are human... they are not quite human like him.

The “aliens” have amorphous gender but they are still people, humans left on icy planet and experimented on long time ago - they cycle through being man and woman once a month like a PMS, the rest of the time they are infertile and something in the middle. It is a fascinating idea and I'm glad the book was written in the 60's because today it would have several dozen preachy passages with LGBT metaphors and “THE MESSAGE” (read the word in Critical Drinker's voice for best effect). This way it was ideologically free and LeGuin simply went discovering what a culture like that would look like, which was, in a way, refreshing.

Two thirds of the book are spent in political match between two nations while Genly is trying to get at least one of them to enter Ekumen union of planets. He knows that if one agrees the rest will soon follow. But they don't believe or don't want to believe him for their own political sake. He came alone and while he looks weird to them and the spaceship is being analyzed he's still struggling against political forces that want to keep the power to themselves and fear joining galactic union would undermine their plans.

This part was good but not as good as the last third where Genly is forced to travel through icy plains with a native companion. I was quite surprised that this was the stuff I enjoyed the most. The bonding between them was the best part of the novel. I wouldn't say that LeGuin is in any way good with writing rich and complex characters but this part made me care about both of them.

I've rated only Wizard of Earthsea this high but this book was slightly better and it's not as highly praised as that one. So far Hainish Cycle was improving with (almost) every book and I hope this keeps going. LeGuin will never be among my favorite authors but at least I'm finally starting to understand why she is for many other people.

P.S.: China Miéville wrote introduction to this and it just solidified my opinion that I wouldn't enjoy his work. He doesn't understand Heinlein's ‘The door dilated' metaphor and misunderstands that LeGuin used masculine language for pregnant ‘king' because we have no other way to address a ruler that is most of the time sexless eunuch and turns into one of the sexes only for a day each month.

A fascinating exploration of the issue of gender while simultaneously evoking a whole different world in a convincing and believable way. On top of this, a moving and unsentimental love story. Le Guin is a master.

This book was excellent, but not my taste.

Very interesting concepts and fascinating political maneuvering, but written in a largely inaccessible style for a significant part of the book. Le Guin introduces Gethenian concepts and doesn't explain them right away, leaving me very confused a lot of the time.

Cool concept, execution wasn't for me.