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

challenging mysterious slow-paced
  • 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? No

2.0

 
This was a "read out loud together at night (and sometimes listen during road trips)" read for me and my partner. This follows in an illustrious list that included revisiting old favs like His Dark Materials, trying out new things like The Tensorate Series, attempting to see what we may have missed  (we tried The Lightning Thief and learned that Percy Jackson was *not* for us) and experiencing together (we'd read most of it separately) the Grishaverse (to complement the, heartbreakingly cancelled too soon, Netflix adaptation).  In fact, the success of that joint journey inspired us to give The Three-Body Problem a try, since it too was recently adapted by Netflix. 
 
Per Goodreads, this novel is "Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion."  
 
Now, this blurb does, in fact, describe what happens in this novel. It does. And yet...it was absolutely not at all what I expected, based on that blurb. Having read the translator's note at the end, it seems that the structural pieces that made this not what I anticipated might be due to different cultural story-telling styles. Which is an adjustment, of course, but fine overall. To me, it felt that the story was told in a very segmented way, with one group/situation/timeline/event introduced and (for the most part) fully developed and told, before jumping to another aspect all together. And while technically in the end everything got explained to some extent, some of the explanations were for interactions/events that had happened so long ago I had forgotten about them or they never felt fully integrated with the rest of the story. Also, this meant that some of the sections that were less interesting to me were a bit of a slog, since I had to fullllllly immerse before being able to leave them behind and immerse in the next part. Anyways, all that to say, nothing wrong with that, just an unfamiliar style and (since there were parts I was less into) I would have preferred them to be a bit more interspersed, developmentally.   
 
Other than that, the biggest thing that made me not love this reading experience was how heavy the science was, in the scifi balance. Like, I tend to prefer my scifi more space opera, with the science in the background, or taken on faith, or just altogether already settled and in a new/not-familiar (i.e. not Earth) setting. I think the thing that most threw me about this sci-fi was how much (for how long) it was based on Earth/IRL. Now, there's very classic scifi that fits this mold., and it's absolutely high quality/legit scifi...it's just not my fav. Similarly, I actually am not a hard sciences person. So, when an intimate understanding of complex (to me, at least) scientific concepts, like multi-dimensions and the way atoms split and radio waves travel, is central to the greater story and events development...I struggle. This felt like a very esoteric level of scifi that I can see why lots of people love, but it's not my vibe.  
 
Character-wise, and this could again be related to story-telling styles coming through in translation, or just the style of translation, but I felt like these characters were all just there... Very few of them were fully dimensional (the exception being who I considered the female MC, Ye Wenjie) and many actually felt more like caricatures than anything else. And the aliens. We eventually got to them. But I don't know...they felt unreal. Which, ok, I get that they technically aren't. But even within the story, their space on the pages and their development felt too distant/unclear to be genuine. And all of it bordered on a weird that was too much for me. 
 
While the details were astounding and impressive, and the greater situation that Cixin created felt legitimate and tangible, there was enough unevenness in the story-telling, and an extreme esoteric-ness to the science, that kept me too far removed, and a bit too bogged down, to become as invested as I would have liked. This is wildly intelligent, creative, and the scope is superb, but it wasn't for me. I respect it, but I personally won't be reading the rest of the trilogy, nor will I be watching the show (I'll let my partner report back on the adaptation and see what he thinks instead). 
 
"Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is on;y because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean..." 
 
“Theory is the foundation of application. Isn't discovering fundamental laws the biggest contribution to our time? [...] It's easy to make ideological mistakes in theory.” 
 
“In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.” 
 
“We don’t know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.” 
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