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meganpbell's review
- 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
Graphic: Death of parent, Child death, and Murder
Moderate: Alcohol, Body horror, and Sexism
Minor: Genocide and War
uranaishi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Graphic: Gore, Violence, Bullying, Emotional abuse, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, War, Alcohol, Classism, Abandonment, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Blood
Minor: Colonisation, Pregnancy, Suicide attempt, Domestic abuse, Police brutality, and Suicide
ilikewords's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
All in all, an excellent book and series for readers who are interested in engaging with genuinely creative hard sci fi topics and a fascinating plot, but not a great fit for readers who need to feel engaged with well actualized characters to stick to a plot.
Moderate: Sexism
beebidon's review
- 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 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.Â
Iâve seen people say their complaint was that the characters were too static or bland, and people who adored the book rebutting those complaints with âthatâs just the translationâ or âthatâs just the culture of how they tell storiesâ and perhaps thatâs true. I donât think the characters were the issue with the story, however. They just certainly didnât 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 âgreat, we got through 250 pages of backstory, now I guess the actual story happens.â 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 âyes, yes, thatâs nice and all but HURRY, we are running out of time!â
In the end, we didnât 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 didnât know what to do with it so he fluffed hundreds of pages of history and scientific geeking out, dropped a novella or even short storyâs worth of plot, then closed the book.
Finally, Iâllsay 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, âout thereâ concepts. 3BP drags you through DENSE quantum, theoretical, astro, micro, macro, and every other kind of -physics, but in a way that walking away Iâm not sure how much I can say âwell, at least I learned a lot from itâ because Iâm not sure how much was true or embellished to lay the groundwork for the plot points. I donât 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 couldnât 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 âdo I skip this passage or do I just put the book down for nowâ 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 âwell, Iâm already this far, maybe eventually it will get better.â
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 âis this anything?â 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 âless educatedâ 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 âdeserveâ it more. This is the question I think Iâll ponder on into this new year, and Cixinâs strongest win.
I was also saddened by how such a cool concept as this alien society was still so clearly limited by the authorâs very traditional views on things. A planet as advanced as this, with such unique bodies and minds, but thereâs only 2 genders/sexes, and theyâre heterosexual and monogamous? With every important person in the world (three body game version or ârealâ At the end) a man? Someone will roll their eyes at me on this for being âtoo wokeâ but Iâm just not sure a cishet patriarchy needs to be reflected in the aliens too. Alas.
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
nannahnannah's review
3.0
I donât know if youâve heard this, but a lot of people have said, âWhereâs the science in all the science fiction nowadays?â. Well ⌠if thatâs you, then read this book. I felt like I needed a degree in astrophysics to truly understand it.
Physics ⌠isnât real?
Back during the Cultural Revolution (mid 1960s) in China, scientist Ye Wenjie is supposed to be sent to a labour camp to be re-educated, but instead she goes to a highly-classified government site created to find alien life.
Then, in the present, we have Wang Miao (nanotech scientist), who also manages to get wrapped up in a similar government project. Or -- literally, kidnapped by cops to be introduced to it. But instead of seeking alien life, theyâre exploring the fact that certain scientists keep committing suicide, and they think thereâs something out there devoted to destroying mankind.
Wang Miaoâs got a lot on his hands, and it only gets worse when he discovers a strange video game called The Three-Body Problem, clearly made for academics. In it, players must solve the puzzle of the gameâs world: it has three suns, and the creatures on the planet keep dying when the suns create Chaotic Eras that destroy civilizations.
I may have described this incorrectly, but itâs because I had a difficult time understanding things. Itâs written like an academic paper, and I had to read each page twice to understand where things were going. Maybe Iâm stupid? Or maybe this book is catered to certain people. Could be both.
While the plot was massive and sprawling, the prose was stilted and awkward. I hope itâs the translator, but I canât really know. There were character development cop-outs, like one character saying, âI didnât do this, because Iâm quite a lazy manâ; âYou see why I didnât do that, right? Because Iâm so lazyâ, etc. He said he was lazy to justify everything like ten times in that one scene, and I donât know if that was supposed to be humor? But it just came off as ⌠well, lazy.
There was also some laugh-out-loud sexism, showing this was clearly written by a stereotypical man. Not only were there very few women (except for one of the villains), Wangâs wife and children seemed to disappear halfway through the book. They were never mentioned again. Then there were three female officers who killed Yeâs father back during the Cultural Revolution. Theyâre now thirty, right? And when they came back, Ye described them as âvery, very old, now thirty, one with a stooped backâ, etc. This is where I laughed. Literally laughed. Iâm now twenty-nine. I guess Iâm âvery oldâ as well. When this protag is probably the same age, and heâs fine, but when youâre a woman and thirty, youâre very old and have a stooped back because youâre thirty, etc. Hilarious.
Anyway, when the aliens actually âshowed upâ they werenât exactly as menacing as I thought theyâd be. The stakes didnât rise, and the threat seemed very far away. The climax felt the same. Donât get me wrong, everything was interesting but not very dramatic. I think for me, all the science got in the way. This may be spoilers, but a big part of what was supposed to bring the suspense was the unfolding of a proton. For me, that means absolutely nothing. Maybe someone who actually knows something about science would feel differently, haha!Â
So I just have to say I felt very lukewarm about everything. I think this book is one of those science fiction novels written for academics to enjoy.
Moderate: Sexism
Minor: Suicide
apersonfromflorida's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Sexism, Police brutality, Violence, and War
Moderate: Pregnancy
Minor: Murder
f18's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
5.0
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