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nerdkitten's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, and Murder
Moderate: Body horror, Gun violence, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death, Sexism, Suicide, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, War, and Classism
diazona's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
First things first though: the plot of The Three-Body Problem is legitimately really interesting. It takes a while to develop, but when it does, the book's take on first contact with an alien society, and humanity's reaction to it, is pretty unique among stories I've read. Kind of bleak in a way, but the uniqueness makes it fascinating regardless. (If I read another book that handles first contact the same way I will be much less into it.) And I like the way the Three-Body game was originally introduced in the story as a mysterious element that eventually ties in to the alien contact plot line in a way that you can kind of see coming but is still a powerful experience when it finally gets revealed.
On the other hand, the way that this fantastic story is presented leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion. For instance, there's a whole introductory section that I really don't understand the purpose of. I guess it provides some interesting background information about the characters, and maybe tying the story back to the Chinese cultural revolution is more meaningful for readers whose cultural background focuses on those events, but it doesn't really do anything for me. A lot of it could have been skipped over without taking anything important away from the story. Plus, large parts of the book read like dry technical reports - and I'm not even talking about the parts that are dry technical reports, I mean there are long stretches of dialogue that feel like the characters are just reciting an amateurish script to convey information to the reader.
Even when the characters are acting like characters, they're not always particularly distinguishable or memorable. This is something I've noticed across a bunch of the books I've been reading recently: the best ones seem to have characters whose speech patterns and behavior are distinctive and blatantly obvious. It's as if the characters' personalities jump off the page and embed themselves in your brain. In this story, they do not. I kept losing track of who was talking, except for Da Shi because he's rude and swears a lot, which is distinctive enough I guess but not exactly the most interesting character profile.
And last but not least: the science. We have to talk about the science. It was clear that Liu Cixin has experience in this area (or, I guess, could have been working extremely closely with someone who does): the book reflects knowledge of physics down to a pretty deep level of technical detail, as well as of the process of academic research. But many of the passages that reference science felt kind of... insincere, maybe even mocking. It's as if - not that I think this is what really happened, but this is how it felt - as if I was reading text written by someone who had studied science in great depth without actually believing in it, someone who could never quite shake the belief that science is a bunch of complex arbitrary rituals, and you could wake up tomorrow to find that those rituals are different and that would just be that, no big deal, enjoy your new reality from this point forward. As someone who appreciates realism in the science of a story, this just felt a bit too outlandish.
All of this adds up to a story that I liked, but not as much as I was hoping to. It was a bit of a struggle, honestly. I'll still probably read the sequels, though, since I'm kind of interested to see what happens to the people of this alternate-universe Earth, but I expect to have to build up my mental energy before I keep going down that path.
Moderate: Violence and Alcohol
Minor: Cancer, Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Xenophobia, Death of parent, Murder, and War
alex_luck's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Suicide and Alcohol
This book isnt really Horror, but it does have existential Horror themes, which can be unsettling for somealexutzu's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
😍 The good:
The scientific descriptions were researched and complex, making me wonder if these things could really happen in daily life. There were a bunch of interesting quotes and ideas, specifically in the first and second part of the book. Due to its complexity, it is fun and easy to come up with many theories related to this. I personally also liked learning more about the history of China and this novel encouraged me to research and understand the related sociopolitical phenomena better.
😅 The not-so-good:
The characters were flat and not that interesting and I felt at times that the plot has some holes. The literary style was barely existent in my opinion, as the book was really heavy to process and packed with too many details that felt more like a thesis than a novel. Overall, the general idea related to cultish alien invasions was not my really cup of tea, so the last part of the book was really dragging for me and I had to speed-read it. I also felt that there were too many story lines and plot points to keep track of and some of them seemed redundant or absurd.
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Suicide and Colonisation
Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol
icarusandthesun's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
i'm a little ashamed to admit that i didn't understand like half of it. maybe it was the english terminology—all the jargon—, or maybe it was the fact i'm not too knowledgeable about neither the Chinese Cultural Revolution nor, well, astrophysics.
maybe my reading was also lacking a bit of personal initiative, because i'm sure a couple more google searches (that i didn't make) would've greatly helped my understanding.
but alas. perhaps i will re-read this book someday and then hopefully understand it a bit better, because the story and ideas weren't at all bad! i still really enjoyed it.
Graphic: Death, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol
maddie_can_read's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
I really enjoyed
- writing style
- the tension and mystery
- China's cultural revolution
- Science concepts - a lot were explained well enough that I could understand without a science background
I never felt bored listening to this but some of the science parts went completely over my head and I didn't want to look them up out of fear of spoilers so I felt a bit lost during some of the super science heavy parts.
Spoilers:
Fyi it ends on a cliffhanger.
I love books that make me say wtf lol dried out people rolls?? What the fuck! Cutting a boat in half with a nano string?? Destroying microcosm societies??love it, absolutely loved the part at the end with the bug metaphor- The Bugs have never truly been defeated
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
lvl52_grant's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Moderate: Gun violence, Suicide, and Alcohol
bettysbookishworld's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Death, Violence, Death of parent, and War
Moderate: Police brutality and Murder
Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol
brynalexa's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Fire/Fire injury and Colonisation
Minor: Body horror, Stalking, Alcohol, and War
ohyeah_karyn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and War