A tale as old as time. Boring stuff happens, then two people become best friends on a perilous journey.

I'm being unfairly harsh. It's a 70 year old book. I'm unfair to expect novelty. What was novel at its time, I have already seen rehashed a hundred times since. I'm sorry I haven't read it earlier.

I think the first half is boring because there's nothing to care about. The Foretellers sounded like a hook, but they end up on par with an interesting rock. "They commune spiritually and tell the future? Kinda cool, I guess. Anyway..."

The societal aspect is a lot of coverage for two opposed countries. The message seems to be that a powerless monarchy is preferable to an oppressive communist regime. I never felt the need to rank these options, but okay.

Gender. It's pretty cool! It's cool as a gimmick, and it's also cool as a reflection on real-life gender roles. Imagine if we didn't have gender and if two people have sex one would get pregnant at random. It has some effect on Gethenian society and their worldview. But I don't think the story would be much impacted if you removed this and made them normal humans.

The second half is a perilous journey. Nothing really happens other than becoming best friends. And they were good friends already at the start. But it's well written. I started to care for the characters as I followed their struggle.

The setting is interesting! The galaxy seems to be full of human colonies lost for half a million years. The settlers apparently liked to tinker with their genetics too. And now a space-faring empire is rediscovering these colonies without faster-than-light travel. It's pretty cool. But we basically don't see anything of this. The new empire is said to be super nice. Mostly because it cannot really do anything because space is too big. But at least it feels nice to be a part of a galactic empire.