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A review by tanelot
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
2.0
I found this book at times immensely unenjoyable. At first I was willing to give concessions due to the language barrier, but by the end of the book I found myself cringing at several parts and pushing myself to finish. It's unfortunate because the book has a lot of positive acclaim surrounding it, and I was in the mood for a solid hard sci-fi read. But what this book offers in imagination and curious intellectual ideas, is completely overwhelmed by poor characterization, deep pessimism, and uneven pacing.
I saw a few reviews warning of "wooden" characters, but I figured that was the price to pay for hard sci-fi and went forward nonetheless. But beyond just being wooden, you spend a lot of time with characters who are deeply unlikable--they are hateful and destructive and borderline psychopathic at times. These are traits that can be fun if handled correctly, but with no likable character quirks to redeem them, I found myself drowning in their stark pessimism and miasma. Maybe if you utterly hate humanity and want to watch it burn, you could relate to these characters and enjoy this book. I on the other hand found it extremely off-putting and unenjoyable.
Apart from the depressing mood pervading the book, it's incredibly disjointed. The book jumps to several different settings, times, and characters, spends a chapter or two there explaining whole plot points, then jumps to another place, time, and character to do the same thing all over again. It takes some time to get to any interesting sci-fi--such as the video game and the seemingly supernatural occurrences happening to Wang--but then they're completely abandoned and only brought up at the end so the author can go into a long winded scientific explanation of why and how those things happened. While the imagining of the science is very thorough, the actual story is very shoddily cobbled together.
I wish I could say that I at least enjoyed the sci-fi aspects of the story, but for spoilery reasons, those were almost as unenjoyable as the rest of the story. The entire premise is just incredibly dark and depressing and this tainted my entire experience with this book.
I saw a few reviews warning of "wooden" characters, but I figured that was the price to pay for hard sci-fi and went forward nonetheless. But beyond just being wooden, you spend a lot of time with characters who are deeply unlikable--they are hateful and destructive and borderline psychopathic at times. These are traits that can be fun if handled correctly, but with no likable character quirks to redeem them, I found myself drowning in their stark pessimism and miasma. Maybe if you utterly hate humanity and want to watch it burn, you could relate to these characters and enjoy this book. I on the other hand found it extremely off-putting and unenjoyable.
Apart from the depressing mood pervading the book, it's incredibly disjointed. The book jumps to several different settings, times, and characters, spends a chapter or two there explaining whole plot points, then jumps to another place, time, and character to do the same thing all over again. It takes some time to get to any interesting sci-fi--such as the video game and the seemingly supernatural occurrences happening to Wang--but then they're completely abandoned and only brought up at the end so the author can go into a long winded scientific explanation of why and how those things happened. While the imagining of the science is very thorough, the actual story is very shoddily cobbled together.
I wish I could say that I at least enjoyed the sci-fi aspects of the story, but for spoilery reasons, those were almost as unenjoyable as the rest of the story. The entire premise is just incredibly dark and depressing and this tainted my entire experience with this book.