This is the best book I've read so far in 2020. I didn't expect it to be; in fact, I started to read it back in May but got discouraged quickly. A narrator of an audiobook mumbles slightly and the author has a really wide vocabulary way beyond my level of English, so I got lost quite often. I let it rest for a couple of months and when I came back, I listened to the audiobook while simultaneously reading an ebook version (and had a dictionary at hand) and it got better.

I came for the gender agenda, highly promoted in all the summaries and blurbs I'd read about the book, but stayed for different reasons. While reading about truly agender society was thought-provoking, most of it went over my head. I'm a practical person, so for me, the most interesting parts were the ones that dealt with the everyday lives of Gethenian people, like raising children, inheritance, absence from work while in kemmer, or the existence of kemmer houses. Philosophical questions the main character liked to ask (whether agender (or rather asexual) society can even produce art or what masculine/feminine qualities certain Gethenians possess) were often too abstract for me and many times I couldn't identify myself with him and his questioning that much. But I live in present times where I'm surrounded by discussions about people's identities, asexuality, transsexuality etc., so I'm influenced by that. The author wrote it in 1969! And for that, she should be applauded.

The gender discussion is not the only intriguing thing about the book, though. I liked the worldbuilding, the planet and its ecosystems, depiction of climate and the ways people had adapted to that (doors under the roof!), and also the two very distinct societies, feudal Karhide on one hand and bureaucratic Orgoreyn on the other (depictions of Voluntary Farms were chilling; no pun intended).

And I loved the main characters. They were three-dimensional, they had their backstories, their development, and through Estraven's you could not only discover his personality, little by little, but also the society he came from. I'd love to know if the author was inspired by Japan when writing Karhide (they can't pronounce "L", for starters, and they are very indirect and rely heavily on context when communicating).

Don't read this book if you need it to be plot-driven, action-packed, or fast-paced. It's more about sociology, psychology, and the later part about feelings as well. And I loved that.