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The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

Liu Cixin,

Ken Liu (Translator)

Start date: January 1, 2017

Finish date: January 31, 2017

Discussion: 2017 Reads

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2017 Reads

TIL: April 2017 Pick: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
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last updated Mar 09, 2019 02:21PM

LWSAP: Does the book succeed on its own terms?
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last updated Jul 29, 2018 02:08PM

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What Members Thought

Aug 25, 2020 Michelle rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2020, author-asian, science-fiction, audio, aliens, book-clubs, bbbbc, award-winner-hugo

Finally done...shout to my boyfriend who had to listen to no less than 3 rants in a 4 hour period.

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So I have a lot of thoughts and not a lot of mental energy to put them here without it devolving into another rant, so I'll boil this down the best I can.

1. This book is extraordinarily long-winded in every way. The characters can literally fill pages with explanations to things that can be summed up in easier to digest ways. The metaphors are piled on top of each other as if to ease the digesti Finally done...shout to my boyfriend who had to listen to no less than 3 rants in a 4 hour period.

---

So I have a lot of thoughts and not a lot of mental energy to put them here without it devolving into another rant, so I'll boil this down the best I can.

1. This book is extraordinarily long-winded in every way. The characters can literally fill pages with explanations to things that can be summed up in easier to digest ways. The metaphors are piled on top of each other as if to ease the digestion of info but only served to make the explanation that much longer.
2. Some of the science just seemed...off? I'm not physicist, the extent of my scientific knowledge is only slightly higher than casual, so I could just be underthinking it but some of this just didn't make sense.
3. As a human cynic, who often shrugs at the idea of humans being wiped out by their own stupidity, the cynicism in this was still rooted in optimism and I kind of had to laugh at that. If I'm jaded to the concept of humanity being about to fix the problems it's caused, then the idea of another life form fixing those problems for me is just as unlikely...because they also live and I'm assuming have some sort of ingrained bias (like their survival) that will probably screw it all up.
4. That video game was at best a visual novel, and not a good one. I get the point of it, but if you are going to force me to read chapter after chapter of this game make it more interesting than having the character just sort of sit there and witness it. He does speak up occasionally, but that's just to finally advance the plot.
5. None of the characters have any sort of depth to them except Ye Wenjie, and even she falls victim to just being an important that plot point at times. The story barely takes time to acknowledge it's own characters but is by its nature about the character of people...which makes the whole thing massively frustrating to read.
6. Most of the plot is shoved in the last third of the book. The first third is set up, the second third is essentially a series of long-winded hints, and the third actually tells you what's going on. As a result it's a slow slog through most of it.
7. This book could have easily been condensed down, which is frightening considering it's not actually that long to begin with. ...more

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Oct 19, 2020 Alexander Veee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, science-fiction, read-2020

"The sun rose to the middle of the sky. Everything that floated -- men, colossal blocks of stone, astronomical instruments, bronze cauldrons -- began to rise slowly, then accelerated. Wang glanced at the human-formation computer and saw a nightmarish sight: The thirty million men who had formed the motherboard were floating away from the earth and rising, like a swarm of ants sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. The ground they left behind clearly displayed the marks of the motherboard circuits. The s

...more

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