I liked the first book, but fell off quickly after trying to make my way through the 2nd book. The first had a sense of mystery about it that helped propel it forward, despite its flaws. The 2nd book didn’t have that luxury, the flaws were more glaring and it just flopped for me. I think part of it is that it’s a translated work, so the writing is always going to struggle, but some of the situations felt so contrived and convoluted that I just couldn’t get through it. I then spoiled it for myself by reading a synopsis of the rest of the series and realized I would’ve been even more let down, so I feel like I dodged a literary bullet on that one.
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.
Wow this comment flash banged me, would never have expected someone to not like the second book if they enjoyed the first.
I’m not trying to disregard your opinion but for others that are thinking about reading the book I think this comment does not capture the quality of the Dark Forest. To name a few scenes I loved:
(SPOILER WARNING for Dark Forest: there are no specific story spoilers, just mentions of scenes from the book)
!The zero gravity assassination was thrilling to read. The teardrop confrontation filled me with a sense of dread that I haven’t found in other recent sci-fi novels/media. The interstellar ship Mexican standoff was terrifying to witness unfold. The 4D sequences were conceptualized and explained in a way that I found interesting, if a little dense in content. The ending left me with a feeling of both terror and hope which I had not experienced before.!<
Anyway, not trying to throw shade on your opinion but it sounds like you did not give it a fair go. They are HARD sci-fi books, they demand your time and focus to appreciate. If you can’t be bothered that’s fine, but to call them flawed is disingenuous imo. Not saying I’m anything special by getting through them, but if I can read and comprehend (most) of what happened then it should be doable for the majority of people. There were several times when I had to reread a page to understand what had happened but I enjoyed that process instead of simply giving up and I was rewarded with what has become my favourite series in the genre.
(I concede that I did not enjoy the third book nearly as much as the first two, but that’s not a good reason to ignore how awe inspiring the first two books are.)
If you’re reading this and want to give the trilogy a go as a sci-fi fan, you won’t regret it.
I guess that I’m like the OP. I read the first book. It was okay, but I didn’t really see what all the hype was about. The computing concepts were interesting (but surely someone could think of a more efficient way than what was described in the book). The proton just seemed absurd with no power source. It seems a stretch to call it hard sci-fi.
I couldn’t make it through the second book. It was one of the few books I just could not finish.
I still don’t understand what the hype is about.
For me the first book was kinda ok, just good enough to continue with the second. Then the second and third books just kept getting better and better and better to an unbelievable degree.
I’ve watched this adaptation with subtitles.
Very faithful to the books and the acting is quite good except for the non-Chinese actors which are all horrendous and their dialogue is laughably bad.
Took me a while to get used to some editing quirks which I must guess are specific to Chinese TV series? I think there was a music break in one of the episodes which I mistook as the credits and then the episode continued which confused me a bit.
Having read the book I enjoyed it and my SO, who hadn’t read the books also enjoyed it.
