Rating: 
Summary: This book made me think - "Hey this could happen!"
Review: Forget the comments left before..this book is wonderful.. i can see sort of why they say itmay be slow in the beginning but it is so well written and touching in the description of the relationship between Ai and Estraven i really got emotional over it. The fact that both are exiles - one only a few miles from his home and the other millions of miles away, makes no difference. The two share the same feeling of having no one except each other. I know it is considered science fiction, but it contains many social/anthropological overtones (Leguin's father was a noted anthropologist). If you like laser beams and space ships and time travel forget this book. If you enjoy plausible, carefully crafted original work please read this book. It made me start wondering seriously about what life elsewhere could be like. . .this time not ahead of us technologically, but with much to offer us in terms of learning about ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Great Sci Fi but Well Written.
Review: I heard the book as an unabridged audio tape, but had trouble sticking with it. The symbolism was deep and the writing good... however, my definition of great Science Fiction is Robert Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' or Frank Hebert's 'Dune' or L. Ron Hubbard's 'Battlefield Earth' . Maybe a world without sex roles or biases would fascinate some, but this just isn't great science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, unless you like to read about snow.
Review: It's quite a while ago that I read this book, but I still remember that it was very boring. It was a real disappointment, as I'd read other works of Le Guin with much pleasure. I don't understand why it has won 2 awards. Am I missing something? I had problems getting into it in the beginning, then a very boring trek with elaborate descriptions of snow. I can't even remember how it ended. And where's the SciFi? hardly any. I gave 2 stars in stead of 1 because I think it was well written. I mean her sentences are OK, but it's their contents I not satisfied with.
Rating: 
Summary: CENSORED REVIEWS?
Review: I had written a review for this book, which I read hoping that the reviews listed below were accurate. Well, I thought the book was BORING. Plain and simple. The book has a very limited plot, and is more of a travelogue than a "story". I had written a previous review with the same star rating but it was not posted. I hope that not only good reviews are allowed, because then why are readers allowed to write reviews? Why not just have Amazon.com write good reviews and not allow anyone else from posting. We'll see if this one gets through. The book, in my opinion was a giant yawn. The three hundred page book was as dry as a cracker and seemed, to me, like a thousand pages long.
Rating:
Summary: A deep,dark,and beautiful adventure on a fascinating world.
Review: There's an awful lot to absorb here. Among the numerous issues involved, I found the idea of politics and power as an obstacle to advancing society sadly relevant to our own world. Trust is also a major theme, and also relevant as it increasingly disappears from our society and is replaced with barriers to meaningful communication. One particularly effective scene involves prisoners in a prison camp. When they are stripped of everything that contributes to their individual identities and sense of purpose, the author comes harrowingly close to placing the reader in the camp to experience the hopelessness with the prisoners. Yet as dark as the story at times becomes, it also reaches extraordinary levels of brightness and beauty. Again, the reader can experience the vastness and peace of the landscape through the author's flawless descriptions. The overall tone here is dark, with patches of light. This fits perfectly with one quote in the book-"Light is the left hand of darkness." After reading this, I was left with disturbing questions of the truth of that view. Powerful writing.
Rating:
Summary: Highly human, profound and deeply phylosophical. Superb!!!
Review: The very best example that SF can always give some EXTRA, in comparison to the mainstream literature. This is deeply profound, human and phylosophical fiction. Rarely good fiction. It makes you, in very smooth and aesthetic way - to think about the issues which only seem far away from our nature or place of living. The problems of human's divided enthity are given in a very deeply pre-cognited manner, with such sharpen sense for human nature, that is simply astonishing. And, Le Guin's style is, like always, superb and suttile. It brings you "in" quietly, but after that, you just can't get out of it. Great matters to engage your mind with... Just excellent!
Rating: 
Summary: Imaginative, but too gray and simple.
Review: Ursula LeGuin is without any doubts the greatest author in the world, but I was not into raptures about her book, for which she made a name for herself. Although my soul did not fly to the realms, where books like "The Word for World is Forest" and "The Dispossesed" are, I will tell you that I liked this book. I recommend it to those who like profund, philosophical science fiction, not to those who like action and excitement, since the story is over-uneventful and slow, but the planet Vinter, or according to the natives, Gethen is lovely described and the white, icy vast expanses and the imaginative feature of the androgynous people of Gethen should be enough for patient readers.
Rating:
Summary: Imaginative, but too gray and simple.
Review: Although my soul didn't fly to the, where books like "The Word for World is Forest" and "The Dispossesed", and must tell you that I liked this book. I recommend it to those who like profund, philosophical science fiction, not to those who like action and excitement.
Rating:
Summary: This book DID NOT change my life
Review: The majority of people that contribute amazon reviews are devotees of the book, inflating the star rating beyond what it deserves. My three star rating may not make much of a dent, but hopefully it will give a more balanced look to those straddling the line about buying this book.The Left Hand of Darkness was a good, solid book, but it did not elicit tears at the end or change my life in any tangible way. Simply put, I enjoyed the story. It is a fast read, with an imaginitive setting and a few interesting characters (unfortunately, the main character - Genly Ai - does not number among them). This is not a sci-fi book as much as an exploration of a "what if" scenario that happens to take place on another planet. A fun, rainy-day Sunday book.
Rating:
Summary: Intricate, fascinating and deeply moving
Review: What a book! I just read "The Left Hand of Darkness" for the first time, but I know it won't be the last. What I loved most about it were the characters, especially Estraven, the beautiful, powerful descriptive language that Le Guin uses, and the way she keeps a subtle tension humming throughout. There is always a wonderful sense of more going on than what is on the surface. Reviewers that focus on the anthropology miss the big picture. As an immigrant I especially enjoyed Le Guin's presentation of the obstacles that the uncharted cultural waters of etiquette and commmunication in a different society poses to a newcomer. But finally I feel it is less about differences (between cultures, species or genders) and more about simiarities: about the universal experiences of loyalty and treachery, trust and deception, belonging and exile, fear and courage, loneliness and friendship: the painful and beautiful truths that all human beings share.
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