Three Body Problem by Lu Cixin

After reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (which i loved!), i was keen to read more science fiction books and internet told me that the the Remembrance of the Earth trilogy was one of the best in science fiction. I was intrigued by the name of the series, and even more so by the name of the first book in the series - The Three Body Problem, so i ordered to first book in the series to my Kindle.

From what i have read so far, when it comes to sci fi books, the plot seems to the king. In the sense that you would not get to see sentences which will hook you with just their beauty by the simple act of putting a few words together, like you would in Gabriel Garcia novel. You would also not get the intricately built characters with multiple dimensions to them. But the plot will be excellent, at least for good books, along with an overlay of science fiction-y themes about what the future would look like. You read the book because you want to know what happened next. Same is the case with this book. The plot is, well, not excellent but good enough to qualify it as a page turner. But the shining light for this book is the scope of the plot - the author touches upon fundamental axioms of our existence in the universe, especially in the context of other potential civilisations out there. This is quite an ambitious scope, and to touch upon that from genesis of a crisis to resolution within the length of 2 books is commendable. In the process, i also learnt about the Three Body Problems and the Dark Forest theory, both fascinating and deserving of books to be written about them. I'd recommend reading up about them if you are even mildly interested in space, and our position in it. 

But the book does not succeed in all he plot writing areas. While the context creation and scope of the story is pretty neat, some of the conflicts are very easily and hastily resolved, especially near the end of the second book (The Dark Forest). This is a big turn off. If plot is the only thing working for the book, i'd expect it to know it out of the park. Additionally, while i understand character building might not be be the most important thing for this series, the motivations for some of the actions by the characters are pretty flimsy. They would for sure not stand a close scrutiny.  Finally, i find the constant jumping between the multiple narratives that are running parallely very frustrating. As soon as i start getting invested in one stream, it stops and i have to suddenly change context. 

While the strength of the plot was able to pull me to the end of book 2, broadly because of the reasons i mentioned i did not feel motivated to read the third book. I think its also because i am a person who reads for the language and those small pieces of writing which can just hook you and make you wonder why couldn't you articulate your feelings like that - this is not a series for it. 

This book did make me think about a few fundamental questions about how we make progress and our position in the universe. But the next science fiction book i read, i hope, also has a lot of beautiful language going on for it.