The Left Hand of Darkness

Hainish Cycle

Paperback, 366 pages

English language

Published Sept. 16, 2010 by Ace Books.

ISBN:
9780441478125
OCLC Number:
53345521
Goodreads:
118028

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4 stars (6 reviews)

On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female during each mating cycle, and this is something that humans find incomprehensible.

The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent an ethnologist to study the Gethenians on their forbidding, ice-bound world. At first he finds his subjects difficult and off-putting, with their elaborate social systems and alien minds. But in the course of a long journey across the ice, he reaches an understanding with one of the Gethenians — it might even be a kind of love

24 editions

Not Sure About this One

4 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. I think it was the best of the three Hainish novels I've read so far, and I can appreciate the fact that the theme of a gender-changing alien race was somewhat revolutionary at the time.

However, I have to admit that I had to push through this book. I've read another review that likened it to homework, and that sums it up quite well for me, too. Maybe my expectations were too high and I have read it at the wrong point in time, just like in school when you have to read something that you cannot appreciate at the moment, but strikes you as profound at a different time.

So yeah, this novel leaves me a bit stumped about what to say. I liked it well enough to not stop reading, but have to admit that it could have been half as …

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