Reviews - The Wandering Earth

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524 reviews for:

I read this book because I loved the movie by the same name. Unfortunately the book is nothing like the movie.

It's not a bad book. The stories in it are creative. However the writing style is pretty dry at times and some of the stories are definitely better than others. All in all, I'm not mad that I read it, but I won't seek the author out again in the future

thorkell's review against another edition

3.0

I'm disappointed with this. I expected something more since I loved the The Three-Body Problem trilogy. Liu Cixin has some wonderful ideas but he does not know how to put them into a story form. Usually he lets someone just tell the story and this we there is no real danger. We are told a story of what happened long time ago. The best stories are the ones where he does not do this. So in short good ideas which need a better story.

Another problem is that Liu Cixin is not good at creating characters. I forgave this in The Three-Body Problem since it was so wild and original. Here there are no characters at all. Switch one out for another and you would get the same results. Another example of how the stories fail to service the ideas.

larsinio's review against another edition

2.0

Hard scifi short novel with a relatively interesting premise, although i

Definitely see the groundwork for his later novels in this story - basic versions of characters, same long-time span type of astrophysics-based story. Everything is weaker - plot makes less sense, characters are less characters, mass culture and sociology presented is more overtly nationalist china influenced.

unfortunately the story spirals into a very silly and unbelievable "civil war" with a final "gotcha" in the end - the end of which is only about 1/3 of the entire "wandering."

This should have been fleshed out to a longer novella.

j_ardis's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

spacedlaw's review against another edition

5.0

A most extraordinary voyage, rich in science and vivid imagery.

The only negative point I did find in the story is that it seems to posit that all animals and plants are sacrificed to save humanity. Animals in particular are never mentioned.
While this is in line with our current behaviour towards our fellow earth creatures, it felt horrifying, as if this future Earth had long ago forgotten it had shared the planet with other creatures at some point. Chilling.