This took me on a very frustrating ride, y’all. Having been heavily recommended by many smart friends, I struggled through 80% of this. Heavy science, disjointed speech and conversational style, and facts and footnotes made it feel less a narrative and more a heavy historical textbook - of which I was interested in connecting emotionally to the material, but couldn’t quite keep the effort. But, around 80% in, things sped up, and it felt the context was helpful, if not entirely necessary to have spread it so thickly in the beginning.

I persevered, probably, only because we have the trilogy in hard copy, and I already felt it was a sunk investment.

However: On reading the post scripts from the author and the translator, I finally felt the emotion and context that seemed to be lacking from the first part of the story. Where was THIS emotion, context, thought, and language, throughout the whole story? Come on Cixin, if you can write like this, where was it in 400 pages?

A quote from the translator “the best translations into English, do not in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tenor of another people’s gestures and movements.”

Overall, I think the message, story, and framing are important. I wish this went further into passionate framing of the history, but by nature of the protagonist being a scientist, the words on the page seemed dry and factual. I usually love Asian history/narrative and find a lot of connection, but this seemed to miss the underlying personal motivation and deep character development from a first-person lens. We spent most of the time in present tense, having things happen to us, with no reflection or context other than footnotes and scientific processes - which probably rings more true to the frustration and hopelessness that comes with people experiencing crisis, growth, political upheaval, etc.

Again, all conscious and effective choices by the author, and a reflection of political and historical pragmatism, but if you’re looking for a page turner, you won’t find it here until the very end.

That being said, there’s a lot to think about - challenging political theories, whatever they may be, and our very understanding and framing of our lives and what it means to be human and have a spiritual or moral duty, and touches on how countries and ideologies deal with crisis.

Oh, and aliens.

The Three-Body Problem - Likewise Book Reviews

10 Reviews