Week 10 - Left Hand of Darkness

Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness was a mixed bag for me as far as what I thought about it and how much I enjoyed it. For pure entertainment value I thought it was a bit dry--I like Le Guin's writing style for shorter fiction, but in a longer format it gets a bit slow and sometimes dry for me, especially when she launches into longer technical or cultural descriptions. I'm not too much of a heavy explanation or exposition fan where scifi is concerned. I do, though, really like seeing scifi handle an issue like gender identity the way Le Guin does in The Left Hand of Darkness; it's a significant cultural issue that's only getting more relevant, but it isn't handled by many books beyond stories about feminism, while Le Guin deals with gender identity as a whole. I thought the cave sexual tension scene during Genly's trek across the arctic with Estraven was especially unique and memorable.