Le Guin gets a lot of the vivid details of an ice journey from the first-hand accounts of Antarctic explorers that she studied. Two of her previous novels, Rocannon’s World and City of Illusions, also include lengthy sequences in which the hero travels across a frozen wasteland along with one companion—but in both those books, the trek feels somewhat sketched-in. Here, she packs in so much indelible imagery that you feel like you’re risking frostbite right alongside Genly.
