(Small announcement: I decided to have my official number rating be the last thing. Thank you.)
Genre: Sociological Sci-Fi
Basic Summary: The Envoy, Genly Ai, is on Gethen (Winter) to ask if the people of the planet would like to join an alliance with the Ekumen (a type of coalition of planets). He tries the country of Karhide first. Estraven, the prime minister of Karhide, does his best to help Genly Ai with this. Things go so terribly wrong. Better summary here.
Warnings: There are prison camps and people who die.
Review:
I have a lot of feelings about this book.
One of the big elements in this book is that the people of Gethen can become either female or male when it comes to bearing children. It’s an element that’s well explained and weaved into the story well. Genly, who is a human envoy that comes to Gethen to form an alliance, is affected by this and how he navigates interacting with Gethenians is affected, too. He is a human who looks a lot like the people of this planet but he is very different, too. He’s isolated and he’s not. It’s a fascinating aspect of the work. Genly is one of the main characters of this work and I feel for him throughout this book. He’s having to deal with a level of political intrigue he’s not used to dealing with when he’s just trying to get an audience with the king. He knows the language and a lot about the land but much of the culture goes over his head especially something called Shifgrethor.
Now, if I’m going to talk about Shifgrethor, i’m going to talk about Estraven. Estraven, whose name is actually Therem Harth (Estraven is more like a title? Kind of?), is the prime minister of Karhide when the book starts. Genly, when he arrives on Gethen, originally tries Karhide first in seeing if they want to join the coalition of planets. Genly primarily deals with Estraven in this manner who has told him he will do his best to get him audience with the king. Estraven communicates in the way of his people: not quite telling the truth and not quite lying. This is shifgrethor in a very small nutshell.
Genly just wants people to speak frankly. Estraven has a hard time with this.
I’m not going to go into too much detail as far as what happens because it’s a lot. There is heartbreak and hope. There’s triumph and sadness. Ursula K. Le Guin writes beautifully. Her pacing is well done and characterizations sound. She spread out the information about the planet throughout the book so it didn’t feel like I was being overloaded with information. This book is part of a series but the series doesn’t have to be followed in order. This worked great as a stand alone. I recommend this book to people who like science fiction.
Admittedly, I feel bad for any sociological type science fiction I read in the future because this is what I’ll be comparing it to.
Rating: 5/5