I recently finished reading The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.  While I mostly live under a rock when it comes to (social) media, this one popped up on my radar in a number of different places, and, when a co-worker loaned me his copy, I decided I would give it a shot.  As a science-fiction novel containing aliens, strange cultures, and possible invasion plans, it’s pretty much in my wheelhouse, and curtails nicely with the game that I’m currently running.

As I got into the book, I recognized that it has quite a different cadence than I’m used to, even though its framing was comfortable.  In particular, it jumps around between times and characters to strategically provide context to the story (which I’m used to), but  it seemed to leave out the actions of key characters and instead illustrate more fully the consequences of those actions.  I thought this was an interesting way to tell the story, as it gave the impression that there was more going on than was explicitly stated, though it also made the protagonist seem very passive.

I think the thing that bothered me the most about the book was the character of Ye Wenji.  On the one hand, the author describes her as a caring, gentle, and patient person, but her actions are so ruthless and damning that it’s difficult for me to really wrap my head around what role she is playing; instead, I just generally disliked the character.  Since her story is a large part of what the book was about, I found that I didn’t enjoy the book very much.

Overall, I felt that the book was quite good.  There were a lot of interesting ideas, and the big ideas in the book were definitely interesting.  The alien concepts and setup very much captured my imagination and kept me reading.  However, I wasn’t able to connect with the characters, and, at the end, this left the book far less engaging for me.