4! maybe even 4.5. i really really really liked this, and im glad i read this as my first le guin book since im in my sci fi phase, instead of forcing myself to read earthsea.

i dont know what to say to really do this book justice. it was my first “utopic” sci fi. reading about anarres was so fascinating. the flaws present in that society make it all the more realistic which as someone with far left leanings-though not quite anarchist-it really did reignite something inside me. so many wonderful and heartbreaking insights in this book.

“They say there is nothing new under the sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?”

“Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of
past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it…The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.”

“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”

“He had always feared that this would happen,
more than he had ever feared death. To die is to lose the self and rejoin the rest. He had kept himself, and lost the rest.”

Etc.

The whole thing is just a thoughtful study of humanity and freedom and sacrifice and the effects of the society one grows up in and I really recommend.