I must admit, this book didn't capture me as much as others. It is not long though, and you have to consider its age (published in 1966!).

Its ideas and story are therefore quite remarkable. I have not read the other, more famous stories from the Hainish novels, but I'm sure this is not the best.

It contains some landmarks of Scifi though (even though most of it is high fantasy), most remarkably the Ansible, which Le Guin invented here and which is a mainstay for so many other works from later authors.