this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Yeah once the revolution began I was glued in. Then the scene with the Terran just hit so hard.LeGuinn has a distinctive narrative style where she spends a lot of time setting up the world and showing you how everything is and who everyone is, with clear allusions and exploration, but then somewhere around 2/3-3/4 of the way through she just starts hitting you emotionally and it just keeps accelerating from there. I definitely wish I'd been warned about that before I started reading her because I almost stopped Left Hand of Darkness because it was so dry until I was crying.
Also apparently Shevek was modeled after her parents' friend: Oppenheimer, which tracks but is also kinda wild
But yeah highly recommend Thd Day Before the Revolution to anyone who liked The Dispossessed or is interested in it. It's just following an elderly Odo through her thoughts the day before the dam breaks and her ideology's revolution begins.
Oppenheimer as in the Oppenheimer? Mr. Gita Quote? I am become death? Holy shit!
And yes! I've noticed the same thing. So far I've read the first earthsea book and the Dispossessed, and both of them I nearly quit. Started rocannans world but I did quit it, but just because life got in the way.
Do you know if there's an audio version of the day before the revolution? My eyes hurt terribly when I read any more, and I rarely have time anyway. I tend to do audio whenever possible.
Yeah, it's wild lol
And yeah I really recommend rocannon. It's weird by her standards, very sci fi with the trappings of fantasy, but when it hits the emotional payoff it's worth it. Planet of Exile is probably my least favorite of her books I've read so far, it's not bad it's just pocahontas in space and feels uncomfortable to a modern audience as the indigenous species are portrayed in a way similar to how colonizers often depict indigenous peoples. City of Illusions which was an amazing book taking place on Terra and drawing heavily from her interpretation of Taoism. Definitely read those three in that order though.
Left Hand of Darkness is a masterpiece on the level of The Dispossessed. It definitely is less of a mind blowing thing in a world where feminist theory is where it is and most people are aware of trans people, but it still hits hard especially because some of the differences of the people of Winter are clearly because they only sexually differentiate temporarily during estrus, others are because they live in the equatorial band of a mostly glacier planet, and others are left ambiguous.
It looks like YouTube has some readings of it.