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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[–] 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 20 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.