I really enjoyed the story and the science fiction concepts in these books but the characters were just awful. I don’t mean that I particularly hated them or anything I just mean that they weren’t very well characterized.
The characters and their actions seem to exist explicitly to drive the plot forward. I still encourage people to read them because I think has a bunch of novel concepts and the text is pretty concise.
The translator created a short story that was turned into an animated series called Pantheon. It is absolutely fucking mind-blowingly incredible. If you’ve read all of the three body problem you’ll probably really like this too. If you found the three body problem series to have shortcomings, none of them are in Pantheon.
In the first book, the main character has approximately one scene (maybe two) with his wife and child, during which he seems to have a mental breakdown and leaves his wife in tears. They’re never mentioned again throughout the rest of the book. The characters were one of the worst things about it, just nothing there and completely unrealistic dialogue. It felt too much like going through a textbook at times.
I’ll give Pantheon a try, thanks for the recommendation.
I finished watching Pantheon season 2 recently and it’s amazing.
I didn’t make the connection with the translator of the book being the author of the short stories it was based on but now that you mention it, the way a sci-fi concept is introduced out of secrecy, into the broad World and then pushed all the way rings similar.
I really enjoyed the story and the science fiction concepts in these books but the characters were just awful. I don’t mean that I particularly hated them or anything I just mean that they weren’t very well characterized.
The characters and their actions seem to exist explicitly to drive the plot forward. I still encourage people to read them because I think has a bunch of novel concepts and the text is pretty concise.
The translator created a short story that was turned into an animated series called Pantheon. It is absolutely fucking mind-blowingly incredible. If you’ve read all of the three body problem you’ll probably really like this too. If you found the three body problem series to have shortcomings, none of them are in Pantheon.
On a somewhat unrelated note,
In the first book, the main character has approximately one scene (maybe two) with his wife and child, during which he seems to have a mental breakdown and leaves his wife in tears. They’re never mentioned again throughout the rest of the book. The characters were one of the worst things about it, just nothing there and completely unrealistic dialogue. It felt too much like going through a textbook at times.
I’ll give Pantheon a try, thanks for the recommendation.
I finished watching Pantheon season 2 recently and it’s amazing.
I didn’t make the connection with the translator of the book being the author of the short stories it was based on but now that you mention it, the way a sci-fi concept is introduced out of secrecy, into the broad World and then pushed all the way rings similar.