I wasn't really sure what to expect of this book and made some jokes along the way. At one point, it was "oh this is just Frodo and Sam on skis". I don't read high fantasy or sci fi with a lot of world building much and, as such, the first third of the book or so wasn't really for me. That said, I'm glad I stuck with it because there were so many subtle explorations of interesting ideas as well as clear foundations for future scifi. This was a slow burn joy that I'd recommend to anyone interested in classic SciFi (and, obviously, gender & sex issues but you can read other comments about that elsewhere).