I'm a huge fan of Ursula Le Guin. I loved the Earthsea trilogy later to become a quartet (now there's a wizard's tale! Eat you heart out Harry Potter!) and having gone to school with her son and met her in person I thought I knew most of her books so I was pleasantly surprised to find that this classic from 1969 had slipped me by. 'The Left Hand Of Darkness' is not a long book but it is exceptionally well written and plotted. It has the feel of a long book, in a good way since it manages to explore and include so many different and imaginative concepts in its 256 pages. Often described as the first example of feminist Science Fiction it explores the role of ...  Read the complete review

Genly Ai is the emissary of the Ekumen, a far future, benificent community of humankind that seeks connectivity between the disparate and distanced worlds that humans have populated. Genly is sent to Gethen, also known as Winter, a planet in the grip of an ice-age and beyond the rim of the Ekumen’s known space. Gethen is populated by ambisexuals: human beings who can be either sex, and who experience sex in what is termed the kemmer/somer cycle, whereby they begin to develop the sexual characteristics of a man or a woman, and their partner, in response, develops those of the opposite – this is kemmer, described as a ritual torment and festivity of sex. When ..  Read the complete review