This is a novel that took me far too long to get through. Three months. A slow, meandering burn through the start of one season and the end of another. Summer to winter, and through the cycle it continued, while my own world seemed a never ending stream of rotation through sunlight and night.
The book starts with incredible strength, and it ends on notes of sadness, and the last third is packed with thrilling adventure, risk, monotony and pure survival.
The Left Hand of Darkness is an interesting title, too. It is evocative, and when I picked up the book, I thought it would be about someone so incredibly evil and treacherous, or perhaps about a clock. No. It is much like the other Hainish cycle novels I've read to date.
A stranger in a strange land (this one filled with androgynous beings who have their gender flow based on their biological requirements of the time) explores two nations. There's support from friends, betrayal, imprisonment, chaotic torture, understanding, forgiveness, tolerance, and intolerance.
I found the pacing of this tale to have a steady gait, and at times, I was frustrated at things moving too slowly. In other parts, I wanted to linger longer, and experience the very cessation of progress, the feeling of utter desolation and stillness that the plot imposed upon the protagonist.
To a modern reader, there does not seem to be anything earth-shattering about gender here, but ultimately, this was, once upon a time, a book about the biological and mental lines of gender, and it feels as though its impact is mostly locked away in a prior, far more oppressive and rigid timeline of our own making.
In the novel, the roles are reversed, with the cisgendered protagonist being in the minority, while everyone in the world around him are in flux. Like most of LeGuin's writing (that I've read... which is limited) - the study of of a people, of a society, of a way in which things work is constantly bubbling away in the sub-plots, and boils over when the cast approach too closely.
I don't regret reading the book, but I will be the first to say that I didn't enjoy it. If I did, I would have finished it months ago, instead of now still struggling to write words about it.
This book made me feel, however, that I had truly lived the tormented and strife-filled life of another, which is an experience rarely found in fiction.
The Left Hand of Darkness is a book about acceptance and power, but it is wrapped in layers of metaphor and literalism at the same time. This can make it hard to penetrate and truly absorb. You'll feel like you're right on the ice plains, hauling a cart across the endless wilderness, then, it will break your heart.
I'm in two minds. I liked parts, I got attached. I got detached. It might take some time for this novel to truly sink into the snow flurries of my mind to find where it truly sits.