Wow, that was BORING. And incredibly misogynistic in a problematic unchecked way as it was the literal 'othering' of everything feminine. La Guin attempts to make a social commentary about the role of gender in our society, but she falls into the all-too-common trap of villainizing everything associated with 'female' in order to do so. The heteronormative, patriarchal male-as-default is on full display here in a way that undermines every interesting idea La Guin has about gender. She tried to make a point, but ultimately invalidated her own point due to the passive aggressive misogyny the book is laden with.
Fail.
Nope, that review is a fail. Le Guin was never concerned about making points. Any "points" arose from her investigations in the process of writing; she never set out to make them in advance. Instead, she wrote social speculative "what if?" fiction: What if society was arranged like this? And followed that through rigorously, intelligently and compassionately.
For
The Left Hand of Darkness that involves: What if the people in a society were not two-gendered but both/neither? (She also throws in: what if their sexuality was cyclical like other animals?) The "heteronormative male-as-default" comes from the fact that the main character (Genly Ai) is from a world like that –
our world. Thus he views the people according to that perception, as default male, and is disturbed when they're not. In particular, rather than being concerned (as he is) with notions of masculinity/femininity, they're occupied instead with a type of personal prestige called
shifgrethor, which he doesn't really understand. Nor do they really understand him.
This is all based around a "first contact" plotline, involving inviting a new world (their world) to join a league of other worlds (of which Earth – Terra – is part). Do they want that? Do they even believe him at all? How does this affect, how is this is affected by, their internal politics?
As for:
I've been intending to read this book for like a decade and I'm bummed to be as disappointed with it as I am. LaGuin broke barriers, helped shaped my dear dear genre of speculative fiction. I went in expecting the book to be good, not great, but good. And it wasn't even that.
I've sometimes felt like that reading Le Guin's books... AT FIRST. The thing to do is
not go off and write a big sulky article showing how much you didn't understand what she was doing. Instead, you should hold off and then read the books again. They get better with every reading. I've just read
TLHOD again and enjoyed it even more than I ever have.