Review: The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh boy. I was so tempted to give this three stars. I was also tempted, briefly, to give it five stars. Before I go any further, I must make clear that I read the English translation. Unsure how much that impacts the review, but it’s necessary to keep in mind.

This is one of those books that does one thing REALLY well. A Hugo-Award winning science-fiction novel that gets the science perfectly. So perfectly. Thought-provoking and innovative, the science of this novel is speculative but just enough to make it believable. Every part of it is well-thought and interesting and worth reading into. There are deeply intriguing scientific and philosophical concepts, representations of real-world theories and so much more. Chaos theory, the problem of induction, nanomaterials, they all make an appearance in a way that almost feels intelligible and plausible. I cannot praise the science enough.

The fiction part of science-fiction, however, is lacking. The characters, the structure, the writing itself, none of them make the book worth reading. There is a lack of development, the characters’ reactions feel unrealistic for humans sometimes and we spend so little time with them that we have no clue how their individual personalities will react to things. When we are supposed to be surprised, we end up simply nodding because we didn’t know enough to be surprised. The plot is let down by the way it is structured. I’ll admit there are certain sections done in a textbook style, but most of it is doesn’t even achieve that. The writing style, in the translation, feels strange, unemotive, and foreign. That, however, is probably a result of the translation.

Yet, the science is interesting and the overall plot is genuinely surprising. So, I read and perhaps you should too. The shortcomings are many, but forgivable for the absolute beauty that accompanies them. The characters and writing will inevitably disappoint, but you will still come away thinking deeply about problems you had not considered before.

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