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. ( )

I am the only person who isn't overwhelmed by this book. Sorry. ( )

First book in a trilogy, The Three Body Problem is set in Communist China, in the present day and in flashbacks to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s there. Ye Weijing witnesses her physicist father being killed during the height of the Cultural Revolution, and eventually ends up at a remote science station dedicated to the search for contact with alien intelligences.

In the present day, scientists are killing themselves at a startling rate, as they are puzzled that the laws of physics no longer seem to apply in their research. Wang Miao is developing a super-strong polymer, and experiences a bizarre experience in which a countdown starts appearing on film that he is using for his amateur photography. He is then brought into a government-led project that knows more than he does about what's going on. He infiltrates a shadowy group that also seems to know much more about what is happening, and starts to play an immersive video game "three body". We later learn that this game is telling the story of the development of civilization in a solar system that has three stars and a doomed planet that is passed constantly between them. That civilization is in a desperate battle to survive the "Chaotic Eras" and learn to predict when to start building, which requires a lengthy "Stable Era" when extreme heat and cold are absent.

There's a lot going on in this story! The science is very dense, character development less so. I had a tough time following the physics. But it has something interesting to say about how humans might react to news of alien civilization. It was worth sticking through the science for me, and I look forward to the rest of the series. ( )

Este es el primer libro que leo de este autor y el primero de un autor chino y debido a la gran publicidad que le dieron a la nueva serie de netflix quise darle una oportunidad.

Decidí leerlo a ciegas, sin ver de que se trataba ni ver el trailer y creo fue lo mejor porque es bastante difícil de explicar de que va sin tener que entrar en detalles de la misma. Es una obra que me gusto bastante, me entretuvo y me confirma mi gusto por la ciencia ficción dura y en este caso muy especulativa.

No es un libro sencillo, ni para cualquier persona, hay muchas explicaciones científicas relacionadas con la física teórica y aplicada que además se entrelaza con la política, y si no se disfruta de estos temas es una lectura posiblemente aburrida. Si sacáramos toda la base científica creo nos quedaría una trama que se podría explicar en unas pocas páginas.

En particular disfruto mucho de la ficción especulativa y creo que el planteamiento que se da en la novela es bastante original y plausible. Me sorprendió bastante en algunos momentos y no fue para nada una lectura aburrida. Me entretuvo esta narración a distintos tiempos y escalas y el no entender casi nada hasta ya bien entrada la novela por lo que me tuvo intrigado bastante.

Hay una crítica hacia el ser humano como "ente destructor" durante todo el relato y creo que es algo que se repite en la narrativa de Cixin Liu.

Algo que me complico es el no estar acostumbrado a leer literatura china, los personaje se me confundían, y por suerte el libro trae una lista de personajes al comienzo, supongo que pensado en los lectores occidentales, además el libro tiene varios notas al pie de página, que se agradecen, ya que de esta forma se entienden cosas relacionadas con la cultura oriental muy ajenas a nosotros.

Lo único que podría criticar es por un lado que los momentos de grandes revelaciones o de "acción" eran muy rápidos, hubiera disfrutado más con mejor desarrollo de esas partes lo que me lleva a los personajes, no se si por la diferencia cultural o por la traducción pero muchos de ellos me parecieron sumamente planos, por lo mismo se me confundían. ( )

A friend once complained about his undergraduate Science Fiction class that they only discussed character, theme, and other elements of literature without talking about the "ideas." The appeal of The Three-Body Problem has to be its ideas, which are mind-blowing, because the technique is bad. I don't think this is the fault of the translation or the audio performance. The way information is presented lacks life: coming off as essays about what's going on. We are (mostly) told about things rather than shown. A few sparks of real drama lured me far enough into the book to keep reading, but I'm left not caring enough to continue to the next books. ( )