Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - The Three-Body Problem

I love reading books by smart people!

There was so much going on in this book, and everything was revealed or introduced at a moment that made you want to keep reading (or listening, in my case).

I love the backdrop of the cultural revolution and how it's easy to predict what Ye Wenjie will do, even though you wish she wouldn't. I also liked how her story was revealed intermittently; I think it made a lot of sense for the pacing of the story to build to what was completely inevitable. I like how flawed she was and how what she went through felt real. I love the role she played in literally everything. #girlboss

The parts of the book set in the early 2000s felt very present as a listener. I also had no idea what was actually happening, so I was totally on board with Wang Miao and eagerly following along to find out what the deal was. The style when

the countdown was happening

really upped the energy and anxiety of the whole ordeal, and props to the narrator too for really selling it.

The way Cixin Liu writes is fantastic. Even though the ending was, I think, entirely predictable, I wanted to get to the end and find out if it actually happened. The amount of dread I felt getting to the last couple of hours was real. I knew, but I had to know. The simplicity of the plot really allowed the finer points to shine through.

There's definitely some cool science in there. I know nothing about physics, but Cixin Liu obviously does. I couldn't tell you which parts are theoretical and which are real, but I am fully prepared to believe that everything in the book is possible. My only complaint about the science is that in a couple of spots it was really dense and I had to re-listen to make it make sense. Otherwise it was fairly easy to follow as someone with absolutely no training in physics.

Content Warnings

sburchart's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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leziga13's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This is very science fiction but heavy on the science and theory. I've never read any sci-fi story so focused on the scientific theories pushing the plot forward. It's not light reading in that regards, but still an entertaining story.

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aussiesff's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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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.”

Content Warnings

alquick's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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lonelylooper's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

maiahhtratchh's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I was surprised how much I liked this and how easy it was to read considering the material of the book and how heavily it relies on scientific principles. I would definitely recommend anyone who doesn’t know Chinese modern history very well read up or watch some videos on the Red Guard before reading this because it kind of just jumps into the cultural revolution without a ton of context (fair enough - people should know the basics) but after that it is very easy to follow I found. I really like the interweaving of the story and how it’s written (like the flow and storyline of jumping to Red Coast on and off) and the translation and translators notes are amazing!

I do really like that it kind of hints that its aliens throughout but in a very subtle way. The one part that kind of lost me was the very end, I didn’t really understand the particles the Trisolarians sent to earth

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