A review by gladiolus17
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

As a translator, I can’t help but comment on the translation, and I gotta say, I would’ve died translating this. The amount of technical vocabulary astounded me, and Ken Liu did a great job (or at least sounded great, since I’ve only read the English version) making these terms make sense in the target text. He also handled the Chinese linguistic quirks with light explanations so the reader can understand rather than omitting them.

The beginning was slow, especially since we don’t get to Wong until later, but it was necessary to create the backdrop. 

Wong has a flat character arc, so although I was interested in him, I was more interested in Ye, since her character arc dipped. I loved how the Cultural Revolution was the basis to her decision in contact the aliens.

My favorite character was Da Shi. He was an asshole, but he got shit done.

I’d recommend this to readers with a science background, since they’d enjoy it more than me, with all the STEM terminology. But if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty explanations of space travel and planets, this is for you
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