I’ve read Left Hand of Darkness, sometime before 2007. I enjoyed Left Hand of Darkness more in the second reading, perhaps because I’ve read some other Hainish cycle books. Left Hand of Darkness is a pretty good adventure-n-intrigue novel, but it’s not my favorite LeGuin. I think LeGuin’s later books like Dispossessed, Always Coming Home, & Fisherman of the Inland Sea gave more complete visions of alternative family structures. I recently read that LeGuin regretted the pronouns she used, & I can see what she was talking about. It kind of made sense for Ai to think & write of everyone as a “he” at least in the beginning, because he was supposed to be from a gendered society, but the parts that were in the voices of Gethenian characters definitely should have used genderless pronouns. But despite the awkward male pronouns, Left Hand of Darkness is still a very interesting depiction of what a genderless society might look like. The implicit critique provided by that vision remains relevant.