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meganpbell's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Ambitious, mysterious, challenging, and unsettling describe this landmark sci-fi soon to be adapted by Netflix. This unique take on first contact explores science & technology, the development of civilizations, and, most of all, what happens when people give up on humanity. Character is kind of sacrificed to the high concepts here, and I found myself thinking of Sophie’s World but with video games and physics instead of postcards and philosophy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Child death, and Murder
Moderate: Alcohol, Body horror, and Sexism
Minor: Genocide and War
emnime's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Noticed a few plot holes, but the amount of time the author spend perfecting the scientific information is incredibly impressive.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Child death, Suicide, Genocide, Murder, Death of parent, and Blood
runefactories's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, and Murder
Moderate: War, Death of parent, and Child death
Minor: Domestic abuse
beebidon's review against another edition
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
I very nearly marked this book DNF many times. In truth, it took me most of 2022 to trudge through it.
I want to call it interesting, but in truth only parts of it were. It had the potential to be interesting. It had interesting sections. The concept is certainly interesting.
I’ve seen people say their complaint was that the characters were too static or bland, and people who adored the book rebutting those complaints with “that’s just the translation” or “that’s just the culture of how they tell stories” and perhaps that’s true. I don’t think the characters were the issue with the story, however. They just certainly didn’t add to it or try to save the experience.
My main complaint is with pacing; the exciting stuff was crammed into the last 100 pages or so, and not in an exciting denouement way so much as “great, we got through 250 pages of backstory, now I guess the actual story happens.” I found myself frustrated even as I was engrossed at that point, because I could see the small sliver of pages remaining, stressing me out as if I needed to tell the author “yes, yes, that’s nice and all but HURRY, we are running out of time!”
In the end, we didn’t even get answers to all the questions, and not in a fun cliffhanger or philosophical statement deliberate sort of way. There WAS a cliffhanger of sorts, but I do not feel like my lingering questions were intentional there. I more fell like the author had a really cool concept he wanted to pitch and didn’t know what to do with it so he fluffed hundreds of pages of history and scientific geeking out, dropped a novella or even short story’s worth of plot, then closed the book.
Finally, I’llsay before my spoiler talk that there are different levels of sci-fi you can find, from low/soft to high/hard, where high/hard is heavily based in science, or heavily based in fantastical, “out there” concepts. 3BP drags you through DENSE quantum, theoretical, astro, micro, macro, and every other kind of -physics, but in a way that walking away I’m not sure how much I can say “well, at least I learned a lot from it” because I’m not sure how much was true or embellished to lay the groundwork for the plot points. I don’t think Cixin (or Ken as translator) did a bad job of breaking down the concepts to understand (aided by the scientists often explaining the concepts to non-scientists, or at least scientists not in that specific field). But I did struggle a lot with dense passages where I couldn’t be sure if this was a concept I would need to know later or if it was a character waxing on for their own interest. I was often torn between “do I skip this passage or do I just put the book down for now” as my eyes glazed over. And every time I put the book down, I felt no obligation to pick it back up besides a faint curiosity and a sunken cost fallacy of “well, I’m already this far, maybe eventually it will get better.”
There were some cool concepts that Cixin was trying to get at that I feel were left half-presented or dropped n on the table with an “is this anything?” look, like if we wanted to feel some way about the content, that was up to us to go through the mental work on. Was it ethical to keep “less educated” people in the dark? Did Cixin mean to present a view that was so anti-religion? (Was he trying to say anything about religion at all?)
I feel the strongest points made (and the reason I gave the book as relatively high a rating as I did) were the parallels drawn between Trisolaran and Earth views about who deserves to thrive, the struggle for survival and at what point is it ethical (or not) to give up your own survival for another society that may “deserve” it more. This is the question I think I’ll ponder on into this new year, and Cixin’s strongest win.
I was also saddened by how such a cool concept as this alien society was still so clearly limited by the author’s very traditional views on things. A planet as advanced as this, with such unique bodies and minds, but there’s only 2 genders/sexes, and they’re heterosexual and monogamous? With every important person in the world (three body game version or “real” At the end) a man? Someone will roll their eyes at me on this for being “too woke” but I’m just not sure a cishet patriarchy needs to be reflected in the aliens too. Alas.
I want to call it interesting, but in truth only parts of it were. It had the potential to be interesting. It had interesting sections. The concept is certainly interesting.
I’ve seen people say their complaint was that the characters were too static or bland, and people who adored the book rebutting those complaints with “that’s just the translation” or “that’s just the culture of how they tell stories” and perhaps that’s true. I don’t think the characters were the issue with the story, however. They just certainly didn’t add to it or try to save the experience.
My main complaint is with pacing; the exciting stuff was crammed into the last 100 pages or so, and not in an exciting denouement way so much as “great, we got through 250 pages of backstory, now I guess the actual story happens.” I found myself frustrated even as I was engrossed at that point, because I could see the small sliver of pages remaining, stressing me out as if I needed to tell the author “yes, yes, that’s nice and all but HURRY, we are running out of time!”
In the end, we didn’t even get answers to all the questions, and not in a fun cliffhanger or philosophical statement deliberate sort of way. There WAS a cliffhanger of sorts, but I do not feel like my lingering questions were intentional there. I more fell like the author had a really cool concept he wanted to pitch and didn’t know what to do with it so he fluffed hundreds of pages of history and scientific geeking out, dropped a novella or even short story’s worth of plot, then closed the book.
Finally, I’llsay before my spoiler talk that there are different levels of sci-fi you can find, from low/soft to high/hard, where high/hard is heavily based in science, or heavily based in fantastical, “out there” concepts. 3BP drags you through DENSE quantum, theoretical, astro, micro, macro, and every other kind of -physics, but in a way that walking away I’m not sure how much I can say “well, at least I learned a lot from it” because I’m not sure how much was true or embellished to lay the groundwork for the plot points. I don’t think Cixin (or Ken as translator) did a bad job of breaking down the concepts to understand (aided by the scientists often explaining the concepts to non-scientists, or at least scientists not in that specific field). But I did struggle a lot with dense passages where I couldn’t be sure if this was a concept I would need to know later or if it was a character waxing on for their own interest. I was often torn between “do I skip this passage or do I just put the book down for now” as my eyes glazed over. And every time I put the book down, I felt no obligation to pick it back up besides a faint curiosity and a sunken cost fallacy of “well, I’m already this far, maybe eventually it will get better.”
There were some cool concepts that Cixin was trying to get at that I feel were left half-presented or dropped n on the table with an “is this anything?” look, like if we wanted to feel some way about the content, that was up to us to go through the mental work on. Was it ethical to keep “less educated” people in the dark? Did Cixin mean to present a view that was so anti-religion? (Was he trying to say anything about religion at all?)
I feel the strongest points made (and the reason I gave the book as relatively high a rating as I did) were the parallels drawn between Trisolaran and Earth views about who deserves to thrive, the struggle for survival and at what point is it ethical (or not) to give up your own survival for another society that may “deserve” it more. This is the question I think I’ll ponder on into this new year, and Cixin’s strongest win.
I was also saddened by how such a cool concept as this alien society was still so clearly limited by the author’s very traditional views on things. A planet as advanced as this, with such unique bodies and minds, but there’s only 2 genders/sexes, and they’re heterosexual and monogamous? With every important person in the world (three body game version or “real” At the end) a man? Someone will roll their eyes at me on this for being “too woke” but I’m just not sure a cishet patriarchy needs to be reflected in the aliens too. Alas.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Genocide, Violence, Death of parent, Police brutality, Xenophobia, War, and Death
Moderate: Suicide, Gun violence, Drug abuse, Child death, Sexism, and Hate crime
becksusername's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-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? No
4.75
I was so intimidated by this book, but once I got started I was immediately sucked in and found it not only very readable, but incredibly thought-provoking. I feel like I'm smarter for having read it. And I can't wait to get my hands on the next two books!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder, Death of parent, Self harm, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, War, Child death, Gaslighting, and Torture
f18's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Child death, Gore, Violence, Blood, and Murder
Moderate: War, Torture, Suicide, and Pregnancy
Minor: Drug abuse, Animal cruelty, Racial slurs, Sexism, Racism, Genocide, Infidelity, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Cursing
gladiolus17's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
As a translator, I can’t help but comment on the translation, and I gotta say, I would’ve died translating this. The amount of technical vocabulary astounded me, and Ken Liu did a great job (or at least sounded great, since I’ve only read the English version) making these terms make sense in the target text. He also handled the Chinese linguistic quirks with light explanations so the reader can understand rather than omitting them.
Wong has a flat character arc, so although I was interested in him, I was more interested in Ye, since her character arc dipped. I loved how the Cultural Revolution was the basis to her decision in contact the aliens.
My favorite character was Da Shi. He was an asshole, but he got shit done.
I’d recommend this to readers with a science background, since they’d enjoy it more than me, with all the STEM terminology. But if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty explanations of space travel and planets, this is for you
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Death, Murder, and Suicide
elsaaacl's review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Child death
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