A review by lindserature
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

adventurous mysterious 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? Yes

2.5

During China’s Cultural Revolution, its military launches a mission to find and contact extraterrestrial life. In present day, a scientist becomes obsessed with a realistic video game and joins a task force to deal with a top-secret issue. Beings from a planet in peril plan to invade Earth. All of these issues and characters collide in THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM, a sci-fi novel that focuses on the scientific future of the human race. 

I listened to this book on audio, which I sometimes have trouble with. I thought it would work well with this one, however, because I got the impression it was more fast-paced. I typically only read certain genres via audio, and sci-fi is one of them. But this particular book is extremely slow and focused on minute scientific details, so the audio version wasn’t quite for me. The guy who narrates is great, particularly when reading character voices, but overall, I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I’d read it traditionally. 

This book has an incredibly cool concept; I’ve never come across anything quite like it before. It is both imaginative and realistic, tying in historical bits to tie the more extreme ideas to the real world. However, it is too clogged with tedious scientific information to fully immerse the reader. There is no real character development, and there isn’t enough payoff in the end to counter the dullness of the getting there. It doesn’t have any real heart, which is my biggest issue with it. 

Two and a half stars