Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.
This was another bookclub book, and a translated novel from Chinese. The synopsis is quite short, and definitely doesn’t capture what the book covers and reads as. It’s quite a science-y book, and I think the more knowledge you have of physics, perhaps the more interesting it might be. For me (not the physics expert), I just accepted all the science as fact and assumed it all made sense. The science took up a large portion of the book, which I think was a little bit distracting at times when they really dove deep into the explanations
The Three-Body Problem is a story that takes place in the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, which is an important aspect of the book. However, the majority of the story really revolves around the story of the relationship between Earth and a civilization far far away. Communication is the crux of the story, and the factions on earth that form to either support the merge or against. The story takes place mostly in third person, but following the perspective of various characters in the story.
The characters were decent in this story, and I think one of the strongest parts of the book. They all had their own backstory that was explained, and they were consistent and grew and acted in accordance with their personality. It made it easier to follow all of them, and even remember which side they play for. Many characters drift in and out of the story, and so it was nice to be able to easily keep track of them.
I also really enjoyed the game that was in this book, that one of the main characters took part in, because that part felt the most immersive of them all. I won’t spoil what the game was, but it was definitely an aspect of the story that I felt compelling, and certainly helped the driving force of the book. There were also a couple of twists and turns here and there (like a thriller) and I think that also helped to win me over a little bit.
However, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the translation. It was likely very true to the original text, but it just didn’t read well in English, in my opinion. The sentences were choppy and short, with no variation. Subject verb object, subject verb object, ad infinitum. For me, this was quite distracting, although I’m not sure if I should be in favour of it anyway, if that’s how the original story was written. This aspect, particularly in the first chapter, really made it difficult for me to get excited and buy into the book.
As I mentioned a bit earlier, there is also just…a lot of science. And as a science major myself, I wasn’t totally against it. There were aspects that were well done, where I was able to accept the explanations with minimal knowledge, but then there were also quite a few chapters where it just really dove into the scientific details, which didn’t feel particularly relevant or helpful. And as a person who didn’t particularly understand it either, it just felt a bit alienating (ha!) and detracted from the story for me personally. I do wonder if those with the appropriate background might be better suited for it.
Finally, the political drama and story overall. This is a weird one for me, because I think many aspects of it were good and intriguing. But at the same time, the execution of it, and the tone of a lot of the characters was really off-putting. The characters were overly direct (again, maybe the writing), and everything just felt extremely blunt and not nuanced. I could look back on it and say objectively that there were many good things, but overall my experience was just not that great.
Maybe I also just don’t really relate to the themes that the book was trying to portray? Just a middle of the road experience for me, and it felt quite long, even though I don’t think the page count was really the problem here. I was kind of disappointed, as I know this book is slowly becoming one of those “classics” that many have read. 3/5 for me.
Down the Rabbit Hole 