Review – The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body Problem, Book 1) by Cixin Liu (3/5 stars)
Reading Level:Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: November 11, 2014
ASIN: B00IQO403K
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Three-Body Problem series
Source: Borrowed eBook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“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. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Three-Body Problem series. I got an eGalley of this book through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: I finished this but it was a struggle. I skimmed through the last 20% or so of the story, to see what happened. I almost put this down multiple times, but some of the VR elements introduced about 30% of the way in made me curious enough to keep going.
The writing here is stiff and the dialogue is awkward. I assume a lot has been lost in translation, but based on the other reviews of those who have read the original Chinese version maybe not. The characters are forgettable and hard to keep track of. Really the characters feel like generic placeholders that any random person could fill in.
I actually liked the beginning of this but then when we moved to present I lost interest. I did appreciate that we did get to go back to see the events that happened in the past progress. The story ends up bouncing between three different settings the present real world, the present in the VR Three Body World, and the past. There are footnotes throughout which did explain a lot of the science and Chinese historical subtleties in more detail; I liked learning about this but was frustrated that these footnotes broke up the story even more.
There are some very creative ideas here and that seems to be mainly what this book is, an idea story. I did enjoy the irony around the actions the characters took in both locations being based around how much they disliked their own species (I know this is a vague statement but I am trying to avoid spoilers).
The ideas here are cool…the plot, the characters, and the general readability here are weak. I did not enjoy this and it was not fun to read, it felt like work to read and was almost textbook like at times.
My Summary (3/5): Overall I really struggled with this book and do not plan on reading any more books by this author. Yes, this was a neat idea but the flow of the story, the characters, and the writing were all very awkward and weak. This was work to read and I didn’t really enjoy it. I do appreciate the idea and creativity though.
