Le Guin remains decades ahead of her contemporaries and modern writers alike in the thought she puts into the societies of her fictional worlds.  The dynamics of Urras and Anarres are fascinating, and the book turns an appropriately critical eye on both.  Unfortunately, all this is weighed down by a true clunker of a story.  Shevek is a boring and emotionally unconvincing main character; I didn't care about whether anything he did succeeded until the ending, which is far too late.  (Also, he's a rapist.  Fucking hooray.)  Huge chunks are him farting around in past or present while the book vaguely gestures at really intriguing conflicts it could explore and then doesn't.  The last 10% gets interesting just in time for the book to be over.  The side characters are complete blank slates, so it's nigh-impossible to get attached to them either.  I can see why some people love this book, because it does a few things exceptionally well.  It's a very cool story to talk about in abstract--but actually reading it is a monotonous slog peppered with occasionally compelling scenes and disturbing misogyny that the book never calls out.  Come for the ideas it posits and nothing else.