syinhui's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Graphic: Violence and Death of parent
Moderate: Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicide
Minor: Xenophobia and War
mdiffer's review against another edition
- 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
4.5
Might not be everybody's cup of tea.
Expect a little more character development than Asimov or Clark... but not much. Characters are mostly one-dimensional. And that's ok, because this a story about big ideas. It's plot-heavy and a little dry at times with technical details. But I enjoyed the book and finished it quickly. For me, this was a page-turner.
I enjoyed the mystery plot and premise. It was nice to read something from a non-western perspective and history.
Spoiler
Characters navigating life in China during and after the Cultural Revolution were especially fascinating and heartbreaking. The end was abrupt and posed a subtle yet terrifying cosmic horror premise. What if a hostile invader could stunt our scientific progress?Moderate: Murder and Torture
Minor: War, Xenophobia, Genocide, Violence, and Suicide
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
zone_a3's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Classism, Xenophobia, and Death of parent
Minor: Suicide
beebidon's review against another edition
- 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.
I’ve seen people say their complaint was that the characters were too static or bland, and people who adored the book rebutting those complaints with “that’s just the translation” or “that’s just the culture of how they tell stories” and perhaps that’s true. I don’t think the characters were the issue with the story, however. They just certainly didn’t 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 “great, we got through 250 pages of backstory, now I guess the actual story happens.” 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 “yes, yes, that’s nice and all but HURRY, we are running out of time!”
In the end, we didn’t 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 didn’t know what to do with it so he fluffed hundreds of pages of history and scientific geeking out, dropped a novella or even short story’s worth of plot, then closed the book.
Finally, I’llsay 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, “out there” concepts. 3BP drags you through DENSE quantum, theoretical, astro, micro, macro, and every other kind of -physics, but in a way that walking away I’m not sure how much I can say “well, at least I learned a lot from it” because I’m not sure how much was true or embellished to lay the groundwork for the plot points. I don’t 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 couldn’t 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 “do I skip this passage or do I just put the book down for now” 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 “well, I’m already this far, maybe eventually it will get better.”
Spoiler
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 “is this anything?” 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 “less educated” 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 “deserve” it more. This is the question I think I’ll ponder on into this new year, and Cixin’s strongest win.
I was also saddened by how such a cool concept as this alien society was still so clearly limited by the author’s very traditional views on things. A planet as advanced as this, with such unique bodies and minds, but there’s only 2 genders/sexes, and they’re heterosexual and monogamous? With every important person in the world (three body game version or “real” At the end) a man? Someone will roll their eyes at me on this for being “too woke” but I’m 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
kinddog2073's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Much of this book read quite cheesy to me, though that improved at about 50% of the way through. Very glad I picjed this book back uo.
Graphic: Death, War, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder
Moderate: Xenophobia and Police brutality
Minor: Animal death
ekcd_'s review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Where to start?
The characters are utterly forgettable and there is not a single redeemable or meaningful relationship between any of the characters or any facet of the story. They only existed so they could talk to each other as a way to move the plot along. Without the characters the whole book could be reduced to one, drunken rant about “like what if aliens lived on an unstable planet?” He put characters in so it wouldn’t just be a really bizarre lecture
This book reads as 350 pages of history and philosophical waxing and then 50 pages of shitty alien fan fiction that is really just the author patting himself on the back for creating analogies that are complicated enough for readers to think him smart but are ultimately meaningless.
By rooting a story in the present and then layering in completely absurd scientific magic over it really removed me from the story. The physics and math were really inaccessible and honesty glossed over that whole chapter.
Nothing in this story or it’s writing made me care about any of the individuals, civilizations, communities or social movements that were used.
I am gobsmacked that so many people praise this book so highly. I love science fiction and read it almost exclusively. The only thing keeping me from rage quitting half way through was rage reading so I could review this book without people saying “you didn’t finish it so you can’t comment on it”
It gets a 1.5 because I was able to finish it quickly (thank god)
Well screw you, fans of this book, I read it and I disliked it!
Graphic: War, Xenophobia, Violence, Suicide, Police brutality, Hate crime, Gun violence, Genocide, Death, Confinement, Colonisation, Classism, and Blood
Minor: Alcoholism, Blood, Body horror, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Classism, Colonisation, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Infertility, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Violence, War, and Xenophobia
I don’t regret reading this because at least it gives me something concrete to point my unhinged anger at. Going to drink some tea and read something that I know is good and purekatrinarose's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Xenophobia, Death of parent, Death, Murder, and Torture
Moderate: Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Kidnapping