I read The Left Hand of Darkness last year. I found the names and place names quite tricky too, but it helped reinforce the alieness of the setting. Ursula's writing is so earnest and immersive. Rigorous world building coupled with veritably human characters made for a wholly engaging and pleasurable read.
Currently reading it for the first time, and agree that Ursula's writing style is immersive, and also I find her quite poetic (some of the fables she weaves into the story are marvelous). I feel just as lost and confused as the envoy so far, which seems appropriate.
I remember being caught off guard by the main character being black, or at least dark-skinned. It was a really nice off-hand comment that shakes you out of the default world-view you can acquire or project when reading by inserting onself (younger white male in my case) into the novel. The way it was clearly established but then also not dwelt upon really struck me at the time I was reading it, and the entire novel still sticks with me.
>The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I’m white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for “young adults”) might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get “into Ged’s skin” and only then discover it wasn’t a white one.
I'm a bit confused by OP here - I didn't at all have that impression. I thought it was fairly clear from the start what the gender of the main protagonist was. Perhaps I misread...
It's not a spoiler. Genly is male and there's no attempt to hide this or any plot mystery about it. The ambivalence is in the gender of the natives of the planet Gethen.
