Wrapped up the first book after much struggle. Am I crazy for finding it extremely poorly written? Writing aside, the characters suck, the motivations suck, and the scenario building feels like it was tossed together by a 12 year old. I don't get the hype. Everything is paper thin. The fictional science aspect is the most compelling part but as a cohesive whole it fails to land.

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[–] warbond@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Damn, that's a neat take. Hadn't thought of that, but yeah, the sheer, weird "what would happen if" premise is what kept me reading, so all of the exposition was yummy rather than annoying

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Liu's short stories are all like that, if you get the chance. What if the world had to be moved out of solar orbit? What if a small class of Chinese schoolchildren were chosen to be representative of all humanity? He has these bold, brash concepts that feel like they were written in a USA that felt that the moon was a stepping stone to the stars. Like Heinlein writing about a kid boshing up a spaceship in the yard.

Liu kinda represents a China that can dream really big in the same way.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

I think books 2 and 3 could easily be separated into many short stories.

Or probably the other way around, book 1 was so successful that he stuck various unfinished short stories together to make 2 & 3.

[–] MyBrainHurts@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Exactly how I felt! The premise and everything was so much fun. Like, the opening "mystery" of why physics seemed broken was such a wildly cool idea and the answer was so neat but opened up more etc.