I've read somewhere that the first three book of the Hainish Series more romantic and less 'articulate' than the later works of Ursula Le Guin, and I can definitely feel that. For me as a non-native English speaker (reader?), the language is a bit too convoluted and not as direct as e.g. in 'The Dispossessed'. As I recently became a dedicated Le Guin fanboy, I decided to go through these novels anyway.