Ursula K. Le Guin is a popular author in science fiction and whenever I thought of tasting her works, The Left Hand of Darkness would come highly recommended. Set in some future, we follow along with Genly Ai who is living among the beings on an incredibly cold planet called Gethen. He is an envoy from a technologically advanced coalition of planets called Ekumen, hoping to convince the nations of Gethen to join them. The beings of Gethen have no gender, but when in a reproductive phase (called Kemmer), they can consummate with anyone and the one who bears a child temporarily turns female. There seem to be primarily two big nations on Gethen, a monarchy called Karhide and their neighboring Communist-like nation Orgoreyn. After having lived in Karhide for a while, Ai is rebuffed by the king Argaven and both he and the prime minister Estraven face banishment. They travel in different ways to Orgoreyn, which seems like a better place at first, until both Ai and Estraven discover the machinations of their secret police (Sarf). Ai is saved from a Gulag-like prison in the cold North by Estraven and they undertake a perilous escape over the ice to return to Karhide and call his space ship to help Gethenians join Ekumen.
Le Guin is able to create an intriguing world with a different kind of humanoid beings and a different terminology for them in this book. The characters Ai and Estraven are memorable, though the rest of them seem thin. There is a ton of world building here which I loved, with a lot of it centered around ways to survive and thrive on a cold planet. The plot is interesting, though there are many myths and side stories that I found distracting. An excessively large part of the book involves Ai’s thoughts, experiences and acceptance of the genderless life of the residents of Gethen. The third escape act is thrilling to read, though very predictable and movie-like.
I read the hardcover that was a part of the Penguin Galaxy and this had a fantastic introduction to science fiction and to the 6 books in this series by Neil Gaiman. The cover design is pretty neat too, if you want to own and collect this book, this is probably the one to pick. The book itself I thought was OK, but not great enough for me to reread it again in the future.
And in case you were wondering, the title comes from a Gethenian poem
Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand
of light.
ISBN: 9780143111597
Rating: 3/5