The Three-Body Problem

If you know me you know I’m a cynic. Why use 'Problem' instead of a positive word like ‘Question’? Is it because we’re all doomed at the end of day?

I’m giving this book 3 stars only due to its lack of entertainment. Liu Cixin may be a prominent sci-fi writer in China and is also incredibly intelligent, but the book jumps all over the place from beginning to end, going back into the past, to different galaxies, and even into video-game dimensions.

It's one of those books that's difficult to grasp at first until you understand the basic premise: do we discover aliens first or do they discover us? It's hardly original.

You spend a lot of time reading about hard-science facts, history and potential possibilities and less time getting to know characters and what makes them tick.

It rarely feels like a novel and is definitely not a thriller.

Our world is becoming increasingly digital, with mobile phones, robot vacuums, self-driving cars, and one day physical AI robots to no doubt do all the menial work, while forgetting some important details: we can close off the atmosphere, put a protective shell around us and unite the world into a single economic power while attempting to become a self-contained digital paradise, and yet we’re still 100% dependent on the sun, a solar body that’s burning furiously, full of gases, organic and analogue, completely out of reach and out of control.

Mankind will eventually become extinct while we repeat the survival cycle over and over again and the only way to survive indefinitely is to develop technology to reach for the stars, to find other organic bodies or suns capable of sustaining us no matter how digital or advanced we become.

The book is forward thinking and often brilliant but rarely entertaining as it jumps all over the place, goes off on tangents, has no real plot and is often soporific. It's also very long and has no one to really cheer for.

It depends what you're looking for in a book? For perspective and insight - brilliant and worth every cent - but for outright entertainment you can give it a miss.