Emily May's Reviews > The Three-Body Problem

One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation.

I have friends who thought this was one of the deepest cleverest books they’ve ever read, and other friends who thought it was an overlong, dull stream of exposition.

The difficulty I have is that I think they’re both kinda right.

Some people said the beginning was slow, but this was the part I found most gripping. I was fascinated by all the parts about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and I thought it was very tense when Wang began seeing an inexplicable countdown in the photographs he took. What happens when the timer gets to zero? I was desperate to know.

I also love books that are like looking up into the vast expanse of space and feeling just how infinitesimal you are. It can be literal or metaphorical, but I think some of the best sci-fi concepts are ones that make me feel tiny. Blake Crouch also does it effectively for me, though his books are a lot lighter than Liu's. That feeling of being stood at the centre of something way bigger and more complex than you will ever understand is so powerful (look at me being deep!)

The story unfolds slowly, creating a sense of foreboding and just... wrongness. It was effective. There were moments in the first third or so where I felt deeply unsettled, almost scared.

The hardest part for me was in the middle. There was a lot of technical language that I had to struggle through with the help of google. I am one of those people who will profess an interest in science but, truthfully, I am most acquainted with simply-explained easily digestible science. I gotta be honest.. start talking about nanoparticles and molecular construction and my eyes typically glaze over. But I don’t mind doing the work. Google was my friend. I tried my best to follow it.

I think, though, worse than the technical language and never-ending exposition, was playing the game. In the middle of this book, the characters spend a lot of time playing a video game called Three-Body. I get that it serves a bigger purpose than simple game-playing, but also it is in fact just a game, and I found it mind-numbing to sit through Wang's adventures into each new Trisolaris civilization.

I've never been into books about playing games, never got the Ready Player One thing. I like playing games myself, but don't understand the appeal of watching others do it. And that's what it felt like I was doing for a big chunk of this book.

Add to this the fact that characterization suffers in favour of exploring the sci-fi concept, and my interest peaked somewhere in the first half.

My husband just finished the second book and liked it more than this one, so I will give it a go. I'm hoping for a little less conversation, a little more action and a lot more in the way of characters I can become invested in. Here's hoping!