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3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
In Supernova Era, by Cixin Liu (of Three Body Problem fame), all adult life on Earth is wiped out by a supernova's radiation burst over approximately a year, leaving just enough time to train children to take over running the world. I'd classify it as a science fairy tale - it's certainly not hard sci-fi, and the addition of actors like a super-powerful quantum computer put it even beyond what I'd consider normal science fiction and into the realm of fairy story. I found it entertaining to follow the events, sort of a Lord of the Flies setup writ large across the entire world, and the way things end up is certainly novel. However, beyond that big-picture progression, there's not much happening. There's no real significant character development - the few characters with major roles are one-dimensional and have little personality, present just enough to push the narrative forward. There's little attention paid to the personal-level struggles of children who lose family, rather focusing on big society-level issues. Even the day-to-day issues of running society are largely pushed the background, as it's largely just assumed that enough kids are working on basic infrastructure like power and transportation, even as much of the rest of society struggles. If that kind of exploration of the premise sounds interesting, you may like this one; but if you're most interested in highly logical extrapolation from the premise or personal stories in such a world, this isn't the book for you.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Interesting concept!
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Not as good as the three body problem trilogy, but still interesting on its own. The setup and questions of what would happen in this scenario were more thought-provoking to me than his answers (in contrast to Dark Forest in which I was pretty convinced by him). But certainly it is interesting to think about what society looks like when one is trying to maximize “fun”.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The best parts of this book were marvelous and incredibly thought provoking, and some of the ideas and visions of a future under this premise felt incredibly creative and sadly realistic. But large swaths of it were just incredibly tedious and boring to read, and I really had to force myself to push through.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but the premise and authors ideas are interesting enough that for big sci-fi fans who don’t mind a little tedium in their books it can be a good read and not one I would discourage them from.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but the premise and authors ideas are interesting enough that for big sci-fi fans who don’t mind a little tedium in their books it can be a good read and not one I would discourage them from.
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The first "miss" I've read by Mr. Liu. Great concept, and I did like a lot of the reflection on psychology, humanity, and history - like I do in most of Liu's work - but this book was so endless and the meat of it was so boring. I also found it constantly difficult to suspend disbelief, which feels like an unimaginative complaint about a Sci/Fi fantasy novel, but even its thematic predecessors like Lord of the Flies performed better than this in terms of realism.
I found it as bizarre to read as Stephen King's imagining of a world in which Kennedy had not been killed in the sense that it was trying too hard to be edgy and unique rather than doing the nuanced work of actual imagination. Highlights were reading about the US from a Chinese point of view (as always), but overall I thought this one was a slog, a bit nonsensical, and aimless at the core. Liu's afterword gives it a bit of oomph, but I wouldn't recommend this one.
I found it as bizarre to read as Stephen King's imagining of a world in which Kennedy had not been killed in the sense that it was trying too hard to be edgy and unique rather than doing the nuanced work of actual imagination. Highlights were reading about the US from a Chinese point of view (as always), but overall I thought this one was a slog, a bit nonsensical, and aimless at the core. Liu's afterword gives it a bit of oomph, but I wouldn't recommend this one.
I really liked the premise and most of the book. It’s a modern global Lord of the Flies. It’s stressful and engaging and left me wanting more. I hated the epilogue.