Ursula K. Le Guin was next on my 'sf authors I really should read' list, so I looked for The Dispossessed or Left Hand of Darkness at my local library. I found the former first and read it in a day. Granted, a substantial portion of that day was spent in a doctor's office, but still. I found that Le Guin's prose is, as always, very readable and engaging and her characters, though they seem cold and reserved towards the reader at first, soon open up. I felt for Shevek as soon as we met him as a toddler and really enjoyed his progression through Anarres and Urras, the two planets.
Le Guin has written a masterful work about what anarchy, as a system of government actually means and I found the subtitle, "An Ambiguous Utopia" to be a perfect description of both planets. The Dispossessed does what Science Fiction is supposed to do - asks the hard questions and leaves us scrabbling for the answers.
The prime question in this book is the question of freedom, what it means to be free and how so few of us ever really are. Shevek's does not set out to answer that question, but it becomes the driving force of his actions and paints a very interesting picture for the reader of where freedom truly begins. The beauty of this book is in its timelessness; it never dates itself even when the technology seems inferior to our modern "stuff". I really enjoyed The Dispossessed and highly recommend it.