A review by vg2
Ball Lightning Sneak Peek by Cixin Liu
3.0
A couple of years ago, I read Cixin Liu’s ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ trilogy, and whilst I found the individual books to vary in quality (the second was too meandering, but completely redeemed by the excellent third instalment ‘Death’s End’), the trilogy as a whole was a good example of a fascinating and thought-provoking premise that makes Chinese science fiction one of my favourite genres to read. With ‘Ball Lightning’, that originality was still present, but I found the book as a whole to be less well-executed than its predecessors.
A stand-alone with tenuous links to the first trilogy, ‘Ball Lightning’ follows Chen, whose early encounter with the mysterious phenomena of the title results in a life-long obsession that exposes him to the world of weapons research and the people who are exploring these fringes of moral and ethical boundaries. A mainly passive pawn, Chen’s search for answers and subsequent breakthroughs are utilised in ways that he had never imagined.
Written almost as a memoir, I found the first two-thirds to drag at times; Chen’s lack of agency made him a less than compelling narrator, and the story seemed to lose focus around a third of the way in, drifting for a number of chapters. The final third, however, was far more plot-driven and pacey, and the dominance of more interesting side characters balanced out Chen’s blandness. I also struggled to reconcile the writing style with the story itself - the plot and scientific emphasis aligned with the very much adult first trilogy, but the writing seemed more juvenile here, as though it were designed for a slightly younger audience, which was jarring. I’m not sure how much of that was a result of the translation - interestingly (although I am not drawing any conclusions from it), this book was translated by the same person who did the second (and my least favourite) of the ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ trilogy (the other two were by Ken Liu, an author I love in his own right), although this could be a complete coincidence.
Recommended if you are a Cixin Liu fan, but with reservations.
A stand-alone with tenuous links to the first trilogy, ‘Ball Lightning’ follows Chen, whose early encounter with the mysterious phenomena of the title results in a life-long obsession that exposes him to the world of weapons research and the people who are exploring these fringes of moral and ethical boundaries. A mainly passive pawn, Chen’s search for answers and subsequent breakthroughs are utilised in ways that he had never imagined.
Written almost as a memoir, I found the first two-thirds to drag at times; Chen’s lack of agency made him a less than compelling narrator, and the story seemed to lose focus around a third of the way in, drifting for a number of chapters. The final third, however, was far more plot-driven and pacey, and the dominance of more interesting side characters balanced out Chen’s blandness. I also struggled to reconcile the writing style with the story itself - the plot and scientific emphasis aligned with the very much adult first trilogy, but the writing seemed more juvenile here, as though it were designed for a slightly younger audience, which was jarring. I’m not sure how much of that was a result of the translation - interestingly (although I am not drawing any conclusions from it), this book was translated by the same person who did the second (and my least favourite) of the ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ trilogy (the other two were by Ken Liu, an author I love in his own right), although this could be a complete coincidence.
Recommended if you are a Cixin Liu fan, but with reservations.