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A review by mightyjor
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
5.0
5/5 stars
I have no freaking clue what happened in this book. The structure of it is totally insane. The plot is nearly incomprehensible. There's so many flash backs and flash forwards and strange point of view characters. One second you're seeing a poor girl waving a flag being brutalized as a "reactionary" during China's cultural revolution, the next a bunch of aliens are shouting at each other to "dehydrate me!" and then everyone eats them like beef jerky if they don't catch fire from the sun. It's absolutely insane. The author is completely insane. I think. Or he's a genius. I have no freaking idea. I really can't tell if this book is incredibly smart or stupid, and I don't have any sort of background in the sciences being taught to know what percent of it is completely made up. It could seriously be all of it. I have no idea. It goes back and forth between sounding completely real and completely made up, and I might have the two backwards for all I know.
The book doesn't really have a beginning or a middle or an end. Really it feels like a prologue, albeit a giant one, for whatever's going to happen in the next two books. There's no real climax or resolution, and the last 40% of the book of so is literally just doing flashbacks with different characters in order to explain all the confusing things we've seen up until this point, and the explanations make almost no sense without a degree in theoretical physics, or maybe it's all made up and a degree wouldn't help at all. I don't know! When I read the martian and project hail Mary, I felt pretty confident I knew where the science fiction began and it felt like I was learning actual science through science fiction. Here, that's not really the case. As far as I can tell, we're just asked to trust the author with some of the leaps of logic.
And you know what. I did.
The book freaking rocks. Despite not knowing what the heck was going on, I kept feeling like I sort of knew what was going on, enough to get this feeling like I was peeling back layers of a mystery that was way too smart for me to be able to solve. I'm also in the camp where I actually prefer things to be over explained rather than under explained, and this one definitely did that, even if the explanation went completely over my head.
The premise of the book is just so wonderful. I'm not going to spoil it, and I'm completely shocked that the summary for the book on Goodreads spoils it. I've never seen an alien invasion tackled this way. It feels so amazingly original. All the cultural revolution stuff also gave so much weight to the actions of some of our characters. It was just brilliant to watch the drama unfold. Yeah Winsea is the GOAT. I don't know how to spell her name, or anyone name. But im trying.
The book also took me way out of my comfort zone, and not just with the science. I almost never read and historical fiction, especially not anything about China. Nothing against them, I just don't find the history of political squabbles all that interesting...unless they're done right. I've rarely given a book the chance to so that right, but this solves it here through this book. I remember and can pronounce almost none of the names or locations due to then all being Chinese.
Honestly though I'm so excited for the next book. Brilliant book
I have no freaking clue what happened in this book. The structure of it is totally insane. The plot is nearly incomprehensible. There's so many flash backs and flash forwards and strange point of view characters. One second you're seeing a poor girl waving a flag being brutalized as a "reactionary" during China's cultural revolution, the next a bunch of aliens are shouting at each other to "dehydrate me!" and then everyone eats them like beef jerky if they don't catch fire from the sun. It's absolutely insane. The author is completely insane. I think. Or he's a genius. I have no freaking idea. I really can't tell if this book is incredibly smart or stupid, and I don't have any sort of background in the sciences being taught to know what percent of it is completely made up. It could seriously be all of it. I have no idea. It goes back and forth between sounding completely real and completely made up, and I might have the two backwards for all I know.
The book doesn't really have a beginning or a middle or an end. Really it feels like a prologue, albeit a giant one, for whatever's going to happen in the next two books. There's no real climax or resolution, and the last 40% of the book of so is literally just doing flashbacks with different characters in order to explain all the confusing things we've seen up until this point, and the explanations make almost no sense without a degree in theoretical physics, or maybe it's all made up and a degree wouldn't help at all. I don't know! When I read the martian and project hail Mary, I felt pretty confident I knew where the science fiction began and it felt like I was learning actual science through science fiction. Here, that's not really the case. As far as I can tell, we're just asked to trust the author with some of the leaps of logic.
And you know what. I did.
The book freaking rocks. Despite not knowing what the heck was going on, I kept feeling like I sort of knew what was going on, enough to get this feeling like I was peeling back layers of a mystery that was way too smart for me to be able to solve. I'm also in the camp where I actually prefer things to be over explained rather than under explained, and this one definitely did that, even if the explanation went completely over my head.
The premise of the book is just so wonderful. I'm not going to spoil it, and I'm completely shocked that the summary for the book on Goodreads spoils it. I've never seen an alien invasion tackled this way. It feels so amazingly original. All the cultural revolution stuff also gave so much weight to the actions of some of our characters. It was just brilliant to watch the drama unfold. Yeah Winsea is the GOAT. I don't know how to spell her name, or anyone name. But im trying.
The book also took me way out of my comfort zone, and not just with the science. I almost never read and historical fiction, especially not anything about China. Nothing against them, I just don't find the history of political squabbles all that interesting...unless they're done right. I've rarely given a book the chance to so that right, but this solves it here through this book. I remember and can pronounce almost none of the names or locations due to then all being Chinese.
Honestly though I'm so excited for the next book. Brilliant book