The full, uncut version of the Three-Body Problem review is available here: www.patreon.com/bookpilled Filmed in Bosque los Colomos, Guadalajara, Mexico.
I am 72 years old and have been reading sci fi since I was a young girl. I find your reviews refreshing and fair and love your lists of older sci fi (ha, it used to be contemporary fiction for me). I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Three Body Problem. In a charitable mood, I agree that perhaps the quality of writing was lost due to translation failure, but at the end of the day, it is a boring story, with really unsympathetic characters. I cannot believe its popularity, given the tendency toward laziness in readers today. Readers cannot get through Foundation, or Foundation and Empire, nor can they read Russian classics. Three Body Problem is too much work for too little reward. I tried doing an Audio book, thinking it would make the story more accessible. I fall asleep usually within 15 minutes. I don't think I will live long enough to give this novel another attempt. Keep those amazingly entertaining reviews coming!
Matt was trying so hard to lay out logical points while his emotions were strangling him. It's like he was trying to walk with the twin toddlers of disgust and anger clinging to his legs. 😂
+1000 points for pulling off the line "then shouldn't we just be reading JSTOR". I laughed. Also points for pointing to Lem as someone who could do big ideas and great prose/stories at the same time.
I completely agree! I’ve seen it talked about so much I had to give it a try and immediately after finishing it, I put it up for sale on eBay and erased it from my memory.
I can't tell you how much I look forward to your videos! They are so refreshing and enjoyable to watch. Lately I've been trying to get out of addiction to social media and have noticed I struggle to sit through vidoes but I have no problem putting things down and just taking time to watch what you put out. Appreciate the uploads and look forward to more :)
i only watched his review of dune messiah previously and I already knew he has such a garbage taste I don't know why I came here to confirm my suspicions but here I am.
As someone who hated Ancillary Justice because it had lackluster characters and boring prose, I too bristled at apologists who said things to me along the lines of: “SciFi is about big ideas and Space Opera is traditionally light on character development.” To which I responded, “Nope. This book simply sucks and you all are just defending it because you have a four volume sunk cost into the series. Do not attempt your literary gaslighting on me.”
I agree. I didn't like Ancillary Justice either. And no way should anyone have to read the three other books in any series to appreciate the first one. I can't imagine that reading any more from the same source could redeem the abysmal quality of TTBP.
He he that rant on the 3 body problem made me chuckle I knew you would hate it. Love the passionate response !You have a far more sophisticated reading palette that is is why the book of skulls and Solaris hit the spot . Keep that intensity Matt love it 🫡
I love TBP and I loved this video as well, lmao. It's very interesting to listen to a different opinion, and I completely agree about the writing. The characters have no personality whatsoever, but I really liked the context built around them. I think it's the first series I've read where I don't care at all about what's gonna happen with the characters 😂 It still blew my mind, especially the The Dark Forest. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts about this!
I will not accept Da Shi slander. Also the characters are still a trillion times better than anyone from Asimov's or any other dozen classic american sci fi authors (and those always get a pass because 1-dimensional boring bad characters and asimov is such an ingrained concept in society that nobody cares anymore). I read the foundation trilogy less than 2 months ago and the three body problem trilogy over 2 years ago and at least I remember Da shi, Luo Ji, Chen Xin, AA, Tiamming, Wang, Ueid, Ye Wendjie, Del Rias, Thomas Wade, Zhang Beihai etc. I don't remember ANYONE from foundation apart from Mule.
The Dark Forest concept is cheap and makes no sense. No forest, ecosystem, hunter, etc. works that way, nor did human societies when finding ec other, even the most aggressive. It's AN idea, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for why it's used as the basis and context for the world in this book.
Don’t feel bad about saying Tanith Lee is a better writer than Dick. I never felt that PKD was a great writer. He was a great idea man. He was a great storyteller but I was never been blown away by his prose.
You said it. The "yeah but..." response to "this book sucks" followed by its from another language, it's hard SF, it's above your head, it's the idea, and so on. These are statements from ppl who love the concept of the book in totality regardless of the final result. They are in love with the idea of a foreigner killing it in a big way. Then try to hide behind hard sf when readers don't like it. As if the readers have never read something challenging before. It was around this time when I completely stopped reading into the authors at all. The book must stand on its own without the authors prowess, for whatever reason, to hold it up. This has greatly reduced the DNFs.
Bookpilled: "Solaris is like drinking the finest, the best, most artisanly roasted and prepared cup of coffee of your life, and Three-Body Problem is like someone microwaved a mug of tap water and threw some unground coffee beans in it and handed it to you." (5:35) 😅
I agree with a lot of the criticisms. After finishing I also felt that it was overhyped. I too, hate the "big idea, no prose" response for SciFi. Point them to Leguin and they will see that isn't true. I was lukewarm on this book and the only reason I will probably read the next few is because of buddy reading. The only group I think this is for are the readers who enjoy philosophy.
@@zachzackzakI also love philosophy and saw the moral dillema with the nihilistic approach liu took in regard to the first contact. It gets explored more in book 2 to great extents so I should say its more prevalent in the sequels
I discovered you channel a few weeks ago, and I'd like to say thanks for all of the great suggestions for lesser known authors. I've always enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy books, but it's nice to get some suggestions for different books.
What a relief! I thought at first you were going to say you *liked* Three Body Problem. I couldn't even get through the first book and felt maybe I just didn't get it. BTW I followed your recommendation and read A Fire Upon The Deep...excellent! I'm now deep into your #1 rated novel Blindsight and so happy to discover it. I've had to look up countless terms and it's not easy but the story and characters make the effort worth it. A vampire commander? So cool.
Last week I saw a video from Vaush. He interviewed a Chinese-American guy who helped to explain what China is really like. This Chinese man mentioned Cixin Liu and the popularity of Three Body Problem. He said that Liu's politics are rather extreme, the guy is a flaming fascist. Of course Liu's political writing isn't translated or well known outside of China. That's the story he told anyway. I haven't been able to confirm if what he said is true.
Absolutely agree about 3BP. I gave up on the Kindle version about a third of the way through, then managed to finish the Audible version. That's some hours of my life I won't get back. I too wondered if it's a problem of translation, but I really don't think it is.
Why keep reading a book that you loathe? I found it to be a super engaging page turner from like page 20 or so. After Wang started seeing a countdown burned into his retina I legitimately couldn't put it down (like how do you even come up with this shit Liu Cixin?) The three body game sections did kill the pacing a bit, but that's such a small problem in an overall gripping plot. The writing is functional and gets some decent "poetic" descriptions across. People pretend like the writing is the worst thing since the holocaust, I read it in Lithuanian translated from English and it was fine. I am not expecting Blood meridian from a silly sci fi book about an alien invasion. The writing was fine, the attempts comparing human feelings to environental effects ("she felt like a pillar ice" when describing that someone feels sad) were pretty cringe, but there was barely a handful of them (maybe 4 or 5, which is much better than most other Chinese books I've read, that's literally just their writing style) in the entire book. It's simply written in a very objective, clear and easy to understand way while describing some pretty complex shit. It barely uses any if at all "poetic" language and it was even unironicaly pretty funny sometimes, I would go as far as to say the writing was better than Dune, which I assume was an actual fault on the translation. A simple line like " they tried to take my son's life away" was translated into Lithuanian like "Jie bande atimti is mano sunaus gyvastį" which basically translates to "they tried to steal my sons aliveness" It was also the final sentence of a chapter and it felt like a punchline, I was rolling on the ground laughing after I closed to the book. Anyway fuck you 3 body problem is good bye
Excellent video! As I've said before for some strange reason I am now MORE interested or at least intrigued to read my copy of TBP (never read Cixin Liu, only familiar with Ken Liu's lovely short stories and fantasy novels). But returning to the point here, this video review was genuinely entertaining and instructive, jumping straight into your thoughts with critique as sharp and barbed as ever. *Your point on hard SF homework of big ideas vs. literary/literature merit/considerate prose along with that JSTOR journal article example was so SPOT ON. Great stuff
For the record, I hated the whole thing. Didn't bother to waste my time on it after 1/2 of the first book. Stink, stank, stunk. I'm with you 100% I watched the videos of that guy who was so jazzed by it, also. Still stunk. (Quinn's Ideas was the channel, I think.) Anyway, the slipcase looks good on the shelf, so there's that. 😆
Dawn by Octavia Butler, Blood Music by Greg Bear, The Genocides by Thomas Disch, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Bros., The Mote in God's Eye by Niven/Pournelle, were all fantastic. Also Lucifer's Hammer by Niven/Pournelle was excellent but I can't remember if you recommended that one? I never would have read any of those until watching a few of your videos and you're batting a thousand so far. Super impressive. I have a few more of your recommendations lined up yet, but I just wanted to thank you for all of those! Have you read anything by Jack McDevitt? I just read The Engines of God and it was very serviceable. It is the antidote to the mess that was Alien Prometheus, in so far as it deals with real archaeology and real scientists investigating ancient space cultures and ancient ruins on distant planets in a way that is scientifically realistic and also with a narrative that is logical yet compelling. Somewhat reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke without being derivative of his work or style.
OMFG thank you! I have tried to explain my hate for the Three Body Problem and people just gave me "the look." I liked the first character and her life and then the second POV came in and I hated everything about being in their head. The game environment felt so clumsy like a mocking version of Snow Crash (which I also didn't really love). I just didn't care enough to continue reading. Ended up giving it to a used bookstore to get it away from me.
I tried reading 3 Body Problem, and could not get past page 100. I am a compulsive book finisher and could not go further. I skipped pages, and delved in further on ...and did so again...To call the author "influenced by Arthur C Clarke" is an insult to Clark, whose imagination engaged me from the first sentence.
Love the info. Have been burning through a lot of the books you have positively reviewed on this channel and mostly align with your feelings. I own TBP so I am interested to read a book you dislike to see if I am equally annoyed by it. My favorites so far from your page have been Neuromancer and I am in the middle of Solaris now and already love it. Again thanks for the thoughtful reviews.
Love this video. The nature background is so much nicer than the fireplace in so many of your videos. BTW, I also hated the 3 Body Problem, and didn't get very far before throwing it out.
Opening the video I was very afraid that you were going to like it (Three body problem). Thank god I am wrong! :D I found the characters so flat that in the end, I thought they can all die I don't care :). This review made my day :D
I loved all three of the Remembrance of Earth's Past novels. I really like your channel (and have added several books to my reading list based on your recommendations) but often find that your opinions are at odds with my own. Art, music, and literature are like that though, there is something for everyone. I appreciate your criticism even if we don't always agree.
@@user-yg6ki7ou2y It's a very poor ripoff of Snowcrash only the writer makes the plot *entirely* about his personal obsession over 1980s culture (especially 1980s youth culture). IT is very, very cringy to read, almost like a bad fanfic. Also, much has been said of his characterization of women. There's actually a whole podcast named after the book, 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, which reviews famously terrible books.
I coincidentally finished The Book of Skulls this week too. I loved it. It somehow felt both dated and contemporary at the same time. I can see how the more "sensitive" readers would find it distasteful but it never bothered me. Whenever it did drift more toward the distasteful I just chalked it up to its time period and "that's Silverberg." It was also the perfect length and paced very well. I would put it just ahead of Dying Inside as my favorite Silverberg.
I would love to see a video about some more modern SF, I have found myself sticking to the older works, as my ventures into newer works have been consistently dissapointing.
You should start more of your videos with a review of a best seller or lauded newer modern book. Highly entertaining. I always appreciate your off the beaten path reviews but often wish I knew what you might say about something more dominant in the mainstream of current sci-fi, or fantasy. This video was a good balance of both.
I agree, I never got behind the idea that the "big ideas" can make up for poor writing and a lack of plot. There are plenty of author's who can do both (such as LeGuin and Vernor Vinge). I choose "soft" sci-fi with great writing over hard sci-fi with bad writing every time.
I agree completely. I was able to finish it, but I got to the end and couldn't care less about going on to the other two books. It wasn''t quite as bad as Ready, Player One, but almost. Your description of the plot as glacial was spot on. I couldn't keep the characters straight because they had no personalities whatsoever. The book was a physics textbook thinly disguised as a novel.
I tried. I really did, but I had to abandon TBP unfinished. I didn't even bother to notice how far I got, I was that bored by it. I read The Electric Forest as a teen and was blown away by it.
If you, like me, have been reading S.F. (science fiction) for over 45 years and keep coming across a special type of enthusiastic comments and reviews, your instinct tells you in advance, that certain books are completely overrated and actually quite weak. These books often only aim to mimic much better originals and regularly focus on surface effects but are unable to recognize the true meaning and quality and character drawing of the original work. A good example from the past was "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson, where he attempted to surpass the style and action of William Gibson and others from the 80s - but achieved little more than stringing together one exaggerated cliché after another, making everything faster, bigger, louder and (actually not) cooler. And I had the same feeling as back then when I read what many of it's fans had to say about "The Three-Body Problem." a couple of years ago. One thing that reliably points to b.s. nowadays is the sheer size of books and trilogies etc. The authors - and unfortunately a rising amount of readers - don't grasp that BIG ideas don't require big volumes. The biggest ideas are best incubated in the small form of short stories and novellas and need to grow and unfold nowhere else than in the mind of the reader. The author who achieves this is a great one. Authors who need thousands of pages to convey a 'big' idea, on the other hand, are more likely to be penny-a-liners.
Thank you. I tried reading the Three Body Problem and could not get through it, and then I tried listening to it and could not get through it. I'm done with it.
I 100% agree about 3BP. I kept trying to give it a 'pass' because of translation, but it just... fails. Suddenly my faith in Hugo and Nebula Award lists is shaken.
The original chinese is considered badly written among chinese readers + ken liu is a good writer from what ive read of his + the author actually says the english translation is an improvement
Well, hip hip hooray on 3 Body Problem. Finished that tedious, pallid, uneventful and colorless book. Can't call it a story. Decided I would not subject myself to more of that writing and passed on the subsequent volumes too.
Thank you! Good to see you in good health and natural scenery looks great. Great reviews as usual. TBP is very weak book in terms of writing. It got some interesting ideas, but that doesn't save it from dullness. Also I don't think that translation is the case. For example we got plenty of books translated from Japanese and prose there is great and beautiful.
Thank You Matt! I too suffered the Emperors New Clothes syndrome with this book. And *I* am very willing to make allowances for translation, and a host of other issues. I have found good bits in it. Occasionally. BUT HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH DO **SO MANY** PEOPLE NOT SEE ALL THE UNFORGIVABLE PROBLEMS? STAGGERING! I am so *tired* of trying to discuss this book politely. I want to rant, spew lists at you of concrete reasons that it's a sloppy misbegotten mess, or even bits I'm OK with. But I'm sure you're with me and I'm less than 2 minutes into the video. But perhaps someday we can discuss it over a beer. If the rest of your video inspires me to comment, I'll drop another. Be well.
I hated it - haven't bothered with any of the other novels. I have been second guessing myself, considering it's rep, and I was reading in a bleak covid winter after a personal loss. Glad I'm not alone in my opinion.
That's interesting, i found this trilogy to be the greatest or one of the greatest sci fi books ever. I found the concepts especially in the 2nd and the 3rd book to be literally mind blowing and opening the world to a new view of life. Tbf i enjoyed the story from the very beginning, so it was really easy for me to continue. I wanna ask you if you read the project hail mary, because it has 4.5 on goodreads, everyone says its a masterpiece, but i found it really boring from the beginning. The unraveling of alien life was interesting, but the writing was so bad i wanted to just rip the pages to pieces.
@@stickyy_fingaas Read it, thought it OK. No firm opinions, beyond that I felt the protagonist's personality was too close to the Martian. I find GoodReads a very useful tool for tracking what I've read, but the ratings are beyond useless.
As soon as I saw your video for 3BP show up I thought "Oh goody!" I read it a year or two ago based on a recommendation and, while I didn't hate it as much as you, I was pretty disappointed. I found there were a few interesting elements like the science blocking interference with human development. The first part was interesting in that I had never read any SF based in China, particularly that period. The weird virtual "game" was bewildering enough to keep me wondering what was going on for a while. All in all it was pretty ponderous, but I thought I'd try the second one to see where it went with the setup. While most reviews I've seen say The Dark Forest is the best of the three, it left a really bad taste in my mouth. It seemed even more ponderous that the first, and the characterization was poor, but I haven't heard anyone discuss one major problem I had with it. There seemed to be a foundational assumption of predetermination built into it that I just couldn't buy. In retrospect it manifested in 3BP in the whole idea that by blocking one area of physics, all significant progress could be halted... okay, I guess I can go with that for the story's sake. But I feel like the philosophy shows up in many aspects of the book from the plot to the characterization. But most obviously, the idea that an entire field of science could be derived from a handful of basic axioms, and the implications would be so incontrovertible that there was no escaping arriving at the same conclusions, to the point that multiple people would jump to the same course of morally problematic actions, almost simultaneously in one case, was hard to swallow. I'm pretty good at swallowing my disbelief when it is needed to get to the good parts, but so much of the book was colored by this sense of unjustifiable determinism that there weren't many good parts left. SPOILER: Not that it really matters to the plot aside from illustrating it's implausibility, but don't get me started on greeting an openly hostile superior and mysterious power by lining up your entire fleet in a tidy grid and waiting for them to arrive. Anyway, I selfishly wish you would read the next book just so I can know if I'm being unreasonable :-)
11:45 Surely you can't be suggesting that people with opinions we may disagree with could actually be capable of voicing those opinions in an eloquent manner.
I have to say your review of 3 body problem helped explain to me why I read the first book, then bought the second but still haven't picked it up in like over a year. I found book one kinda interesting but nothing about it grabbed me. I figured maybe one just has to read the full series to really get it, but I can't seem to find the energy just yet. I'm curious though, what is it, what psychological or sociological explanation is there for such broad praise and popularity for 3 body?
Purchased the book just a few days ago based on a friend's recommendation - I'll still read it, but man do I have almost zero interest now. I agree with the general sentiment of many of your points, about disregarding the quality of the writing in sci-fi or fantasy, about lacklustre commonplace similes, all that made wholeheartedly enjoy this video :D But now I wonder about the books popularity and I REALLY want to know what exactly people see in it. So I'll read it!
When I finished the Three Body Problem, I was baffled by all the rave reviews. I wondered if I'd picked up another book called The Three Body Problem by mistake and everyone else was raving about a different book than the one I just read. While I didn't hate it, I was left with no desire to continue reading the trilogy.
This novel isn't particularly your usual genre but have you ever read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy? It's a piece of literary fiction (sorta? It's a fictionalized telling of very real historical events) and the prose is just on another level entirely.
I agree that McCarthy's prose is really unique. I don't really care for some of the content of his books, but the prose alone makes them worth reading. Love writers who can say a lot with just a few words. Another writer whose prose is outstanding(imo) is Hillary Mantel
I am about 3/4 through series and here's my opinion. If you decide to read it, dedication is key. Read all 3, because they're getting better as I go. The writing style isn't amazing, but there's more action and more intriguing ideas as the series progresses. Just my 2 cents
Here's an idea for a video: What sci-fi books would you recommend to aspiring sci-fi writers? Granted, mostly from an audience point view, which is always important to keep in mind.
This review seems about right. Not read it myself but I read _Ball Lightening_ and thought it mildly bad. There were two or three ideas that made me say." oh wow "; those moments were just about enough to keep me reading. Also enough to stop me reading TBP.
Wow, Electric Forest. So far it’s two-for-two that got a DNF. I just didn’t find myself caring about this novel and moved on to something else. Tanith Lee was an excellent prose stylist in another book I read years ago called Dark Dance.
I guess I have to subscribe because you're one of the only book reviewers I've ever heard say that the Three Body Problem kinda sucks, and I completely agree.
I always find it entertaining watching people discuss Book Of Skulls because I read it when I was a teenager and all I remember about it was "yeah it was good". Will have to re-read.
And he's back! Thought for a minute MX paradise was making you soft 🙂 Appreciate your passion in what you share of these books and helping me ass to my To Read list.
I'm so glad you've busted out with this opinion. The writing was pedestrian. Big ideas are not enough. By the end of the first book I simply did not care.
I stumbled upon your channel tonight, specifically your review of Book of the New Sun. I enjoyed that and while I like Shadow of the Torturer, my thoughts and crits largely align with yours. This led me to browse your videos and this is the one I chose next. And I am in complete agreement with you, and I respect that you are saying so in the face of what seems like near-universal adulation. I think that there is definitely something lost in translation but to your point, my suspicion is there wasn't much lost. I ultimately gave up on the book, and just went to the wiki to get a sense of the "Big Ideas". Some are indeed interesting, but I am unwilling to pay the reading cost to be disappointed in how little they are likely actually explored. Liked and subbed.
😂 only saw the first 39 seconds till now, but it would have surprised me to hear anything else. I wonder what is going on with this book. I saw the Quinn’s Ideas videos on this and just from that I could not believe the book could be any good. The more videos I watched the less I could believe it was worth reading. Got the audiobook and so far… terrible. Waste of an audible credit.
Dammit...I got the audiobook for this several years ago, and only got through a couple hours of it before giving up. I've questioned why, and have since kept an eye out for it, because it always gets such good reviews. Yesterday I finally ordered the book on Ebay... Now I wish I hadn't.
Give it a chance. I found 3 body 50% fascinating and 50% a dull grind... Definitely strange pacing. Turns out, it's kinda like a really long introduction to the dark forest... So far, dark forest is flawed and has it's challenges, but there's some pretty spectacular payoffs and I'm not quite halfway through yet. As for death's end, I've heard hyperpolarized opinions on that which I can't comment on yet...
I liked the Three Body Problem, and loved the Three Body Problem after I read the trilogy a second time. But you ARE NOT WRONG. Review is spot on. But I loved it. Go figure.
I will humbly and violently second that motion. Superb denunciation of an over-hyped dull story with piss-poor character-less plodding work of fiction / bordering on Scientific American article.
What if I told you, the first book in the series is actually not very good. And the real genius comes in book 2 and 3. It's a shame some people don't understand that when people rave about three body problem, they are actually referring to the entire series, not just book 1. The name "three body problem" sticks in peoples heads more than "remembrance of earths past", so people call the entire series three body problem
What if I told that you're making several assumptions and sweeping generalizations about people you've never met? Go post that whiny garbage on your own channel with all the other incredible content.@@keyput415
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it's like just reading jstor or doing homework. I personally loved TBP but it was the first scifi series I read while all I was used to reading was jstor and textbooks.
Interesting take! My uncle said he wasn’t impressed with it at all. He’s read an absolute mountain of science fiction books and said it was just incredibly dull with poor character development. I’ve yet to read it and will make up my own mind as to what I think but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard it getting a hammering 😂
Agreed, any author or work hyped so much is suspect. But, you still have to investigate... There is also the flip side of that observation. Any author or work canceled so much, is probably worth a look, and may be worth a lot more!
ELECTRIC FOREST, DAY BY NIGHT (also by Tanith Lee) and BOOK OF SKULLS were among the books that got the teen me into SF. I reread them as an adult and was so impressed by how well written they were, and would recommend them to anyone. Good and accurate analysis. Lee was popular in her lifetime but didn't get the acclaim she did for her style, which is as far from the evolved-pulp/Hemingway-esque straightforward-dry style of so much SF. Silverberg had a streak of about 8 books in the late sixties/early seventies that is just amazing even today for the scope and quality of the books.
So glad I ran into this review - I thought I was the only one who didn’t care at all for TBP. Agree about the characters and the writing - I just don’t get all the hoopla over this book and I’m glad to see so many comments in agreement. Also - full disclosure I have a background in physics - the technical aspects are simply ridiculous and without any basis in science. I know it’s sci-fi but still, it should be rooted in some thread of real science/physics imo. Otherwise, it might just as well be magic/fantasy.
I read all three. Its a lot.... But there were some cool scenes, and there was a sadness and bleakness that was remarkable. The end of the third book is also haunting- I think about it a lot. I totally get why Bookpilled doesn't like it. He makes some good points. Interesting review.
TBP is “The Celestine Prophecy” of SF, a novel with uninteresting people doing next to nothing. The protagonist is tasked with investigating mysterious suicides and instead spends three chapters playing a video game!? Do not waste your time on this book.
Translation can be a real challenge depending on the style ofnthe writer. I do not know if it was the issue with Liu's, but as a French speaker, I cannot imagine how my favourite SF book ever "La Horde du Contrevent", written in French, could be (well) translated in any other language. The work on the words and their rythm, meaningful in the story telling, and the punctuation, would be just impossible to translate. And yet. They are absolutely critical in the story telling.
I recently read this book after all of the hype it's received and oh my god I hated it. I had to put it down for a week 30 pages before the end because it was getting so painful to read. Just to come back and finish it and take another break from reading because it burnt me out so badly.
i liked the series but tbh i couldnt remember the first book by the time i finished it. The ideas in the later books are really neat but... yea.. getting to it might be a sludgy experience.
I read Book of Skulls about 15 or so years ago and it was unique experience in my reading up to that point. Different to anything had read to that point, and I agree it could just as easily fall in to regular fiction, horror or fantasy. I was very interested in hearing your opinion on it, thank you; I will also add Tanith Lee to my ever-expanding reading list now as she sounds like a really interesting author to explore I have never had any interests in reading Three Body Problem based on a lot of opinions of online reviewers and who have seemingly similar tastes to myself in the past - and after watching this I am even less inclined to waste time reading something that is likely to offer very little return on the time invested in it.
I enjoyed TBP once I was able to dredge through some of the painfully long character introductions. The second book is more entertaining and moves the story along at a better pace than the first. People watching the netflix adaptation are lucky that season 1 isn't just a full coverage of the first book.
Wow! For once we are in complete agreement on one of your multi book review videos. Although that particular Lee story I haven't read, I do agree that her prose is generally beautiful. We are in tune.
I'm currently about 3/4 through it. Good enough to finish, but nothing to rave about. Yes, I agree about the writing. I was avoiding the book because so much depends on translation. It has a lot of flowery language, which I'm familiar with from reading Chinese classics like Outlaws From the Marsh, Journey to the West, etc. It's not my style preference. Would I start it from zero knowing what it's turned out to be? Nah, there's just too much to read in life. Choose wisely, my friends.
I agree, I heard so much good stuff about it but I was very dissapointed. I then went in search of a better way to find out about books and I found this channel
I felt the way you feel about 3BP, about fahrenheit 451, the whole book is “my heart fluttered out like a butterfly”. But to everyone else that is a literary classic??? It’s a good book in terms of ideas and influence but it’s not the best written
I disagree. The idea/necessity of the wall-facers is a fascinating human solution to the problem sophons present, the ultimate weapon that decimates humanity is unique in its simplicity and effectiveness/possibility, and the way the invasion is halted, essentially weaponizing The Dark Forest, are all original and fascinating ideas.
@@AwesomeTingle I can get behind the wallfacer one, but I also found the presentation to be... silly? at times. That's on me. I unfortunately disagree with the fleet scene. (Spoilers!! for all who haven't read Dark Forest) It felt like an insult to my intelligence that not a single character brought up the Trojan Horse. I could see the disaster coming from 4 light-years away (though I assumed it was a bomb) and it broke all immersion that no one in their military command or the scientific community even broached the idea. The sequence made no internal sense and amounts to what we call an idiot plot: it only makes sense when the characters (in this case hundreds of thousands of people) act like idiots. Broke the book. I'm glad you liked it and I'm glad it exists to bring people into sci-fi. Preferences will always be different, was just so disappointed as I liked 3 Body. I'll try Death's End in a few years
@@e.matthews That's a fair point, as a reader I knew something was going to go wrong. What was interesting to me wasn't that the attack was successful, but HOW that attack was successful. I really like the droplet as a weapon concept - it's feasible, comprehensible, and unstoppable.
@@AwesomeTingle I was waiting for there to be a rational explanation involving the use of the German wallfacer's delusion-inducing machine. It wouldn't have made operational sense, I think, but it would have explained the unearned optimism leading to them putting the entire military complex into one basket beside an unknown advanced alien artefact. Anyways, happy reading!
3 body problem's main appeal, I think, is the geeky game it plays over and over of inventing some spectacular weapon based on a slightly oversimplified version of some idea from exotic physics. That and its near-total disconnect from American politics.
I read book of skulls 2 or so months ago and the whole time I didn't know if I was going to finish the book liking it, disliking it, hating it, or loving it. Silverberg has at least 2 books I would put in my top 10 books ever but I think I ended up only liking this one.
Lol i knew you would hate Three Body. I really enjoyed it, but it was also literally my first sci fi book. I was so so into it, and it got me into the genre, but as I’ve read more, its place in my mind has gradually slid downward. It was exactly what I needed at the time, but I’ve definitely ‘grown up’ quickly. ALTHOUGH i will say, the next two books are INFINITELY better than the first. The prose and characters only get get marginally better, if at all. But 2 and 3, especially 3, have got to be where the “ideas ideas” reputation comes from. like holy shit. Book 1 is just half of your pinky toenail comparatively. Still, if you really hated the first that much you might not love them either lol
I disliked it, too. I kind of wondered if the translation was a big part of the problem. It felt stiff and awkward. On another note...you're still wrong about Heinlein. There are 3 or 4 of his books that I absolutely love...lol!! Yes, some are so-so, but that's probably true for how we react to most writers.
Your review of *_The Three Body Problem_* almost matches mine word for word. I was especially annoyed that it won a Hugo. The thing that gets me is when people tell me it's "Hard Science Fiction" ('cause it's SO not). I laugh imagining people reading all those pages and pages of pointless exposition. A book with a couple of interesting ideas buried in extremely poor execution.
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The full, uncut version of the Three-Body Problem review is available here:
www.patreon.com/bookpilled
Filmed in Bosque los Colomos, Guadalajara, Mexico.
I am 72 years old and have been reading sci fi since I was a young girl. I find your reviews refreshing and fair and love your lists of older sci fi (ha, it used to be contemporary fiction for me). I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Three Body Problem. In a charitable mood, I agree that perhaps the quality of writing was lost due to translation failure, but at the end of the day, it is a boring story, with really unsympathetic characters. I cannot believe its popularity, given the tendency toward laziness in readers today. Readers cannot get through Foundation, or Foundation and Empire, nor can they read Russian classics. Three Body Problem is too much work for too little reward. I tried doing an Audio book, thinking it would make the story more accessible. I fall asleep usually within 15 minutes. I don't think I will live long enough to give this novel another attempt. Keep those amazingly entertaining reviews coming!
Having some problems with insomnia right now so maybe 3BP audiobook will help.
Please read more ultra popular books because its quite entertaining to feel your rage radiating from the screen🤩
i knew he would hate it he has too good of literary taste.
Matt was trying so hard to lay out logical points while his emotions were strangling him. It's like he was trying to walk with the twin toddlers of disgust and anger clinging to his legs. 😂
So satisfying.
Hahaa
+1000 points for pulling off the line "then shouldn't we just be reading JSTOR". I laughed. Also points for pointing to Lem as someone who could do big ideas and great prose/stories at the same time.
I completely agree! I’ve seen it talked about so much I had to give it a try and immediately after finishing it, I put it up for sale on eBay and erased it from my memory.
Agreed. I wish I could figure out a way to completely forget the experience of reading it.
@@rodcase1598 lobotomy.
Me too
I can't tell you how much I look forward to your videos! They are so refreshing and enjoyable to watch. Lately I've been trying to get out of addiction to social media and have noticed I struggle to sit through vidoes but I have no problem putting things down and just taking time to watch what you put out. Appreciate the uploads and look forward to more :)
I KNEW THIS MAN WOULD HATE THREE BODY PROBLEM 🤣
I was 0% shocked that he didn’t like it at all 😂
Low hanging fruit
Real recognize real... real trash.
@@revelations-420 🤣 Nice
i only watched his review of dune messiah previously and I already knew he has such a garbage taste I don't know why I came here to confirm my suspicions but here I am.
As someone who hated Ancillary Justice because it had lackluster characters and boring prose, I too bristled at apologists who said things to me along the lines of: “SciFi is about big ideas and Space Opera is traditionally light on character development.” To which I responded, “Nope. This book simply sucks and you all are just defending it because you have a four volume sunk cost into the series. Do not attempt your literary gaslighting on me.”
I don’t think you are being any better a person than they are, just accept you value different things
Just coming here to say I also hated Ancillary Justice. I didn't understand the hype or recommendation of that book. But, each to their own.
Ancillary was impossible.
I agree. I didn't like Ancillary Justice either. And no way should anyone have to read the three other books in any series to appreciate the first one. I can't imagine that reading any more from the same source could redeem the abysmal quality of TTBP.
@@danielgwynne7266 Perhaps not, but she does have better taste. 😁
He he that rant on the 3 body problem made me chuckle I knew you would hate it. Love the passionate response !You have a far more sophisticated reading palette that is is why the book of skulls and Solaris hit the spot . Keep that intensity Matt love it 🫡
I love TBP and I loved this video as well, lmao. It's very interesting to listen to a different opinion, and I completely agree about the writing. The characters have no personality whatsoever, but I really liked the context built around them. I think it's the first series I've read where I don't care at all about what's gonna happen with the characters 😂 It still blew my mind, especially the The Dark Forest. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts about this!
I will not accept Da Shi slander. Also the characters are still a trillion times better than anyone from Asimov's or any other dozen classic american sci fi authors (and those always get a pass because 1-dimensional boring bad characters and asimov is such an ingrained concept in society that nobody cares anymore). I read the foundation trilogy less than 2 months ago and the three body problem trilogy over 2 years ago and at least I remember Da shi, Luo Ji, Chen Xin, AA, Tiamming, Wang, Ueid, Ye Wendjie, Del Rias, Thomas Wade, Zhang Beihai etc. I don't remember ANYONE from foundation apart from Mule.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r Da Shi ❤❤❤ He was so perfectly cast in the Chinese series.
The Dark Forest concept is cheap and makes no sense. No forest, ecosystem, hunter, etc. works that way, nor did human societies when finding ec other, even the most aggressive. It's AN idea, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for why it's used as the basis and context for the world in this book.
@@rickwrites2612 It makes enough sense that real astrophysicists accepted it as a plausible theory.
I find that most sci fi has bad character writing. It's almost a staple of the genre.
Don’t feel bad about saying Tanith Lee is a better writer than Dick. I never felt that PKD was a great writer. He was a great idea man. He was a great storyteller but I was never been blown away by his prose.
PDK short stories are ok. His novels are crap....how Ridley Scott got Blade Runner out of that dreary mess of a book I'll never know.
You said it. The "yeah but..." response to "this book sucks" followed by its from another language, it's hard SF, it's above your head, it's the idea, and so on. These are statements from ppl who love the concept of the book in totality regardless of the final result. They are in love with the idea of a foreigner killing it in a big way. Then try to hide behind hard sf when readers don't like it. As if the readers have never read something challenging before. It was around this time when I completely stopped reading into the authors at all. The book must stand on its own without the authors prowess, for whatever reason, to hold it up. This has greatly reduced the DNFs.
Bookpilled: "Solaris is like drinking the finest, the best, most artisanly roasted and prepared cup of coffee of your life, and Three-Body Problem is like someone microwaved a mug of tap water and threw some unground coffee beans in it and handed it to you." (5:35) 😅
I agree with a lot of the criticisms. After finishing I also felt that it was overhyped. I too, hate the "big idea, no prose" response for SciFi. Point them to Leguin and they will see that isn't true. I was lukewarm on this book and the only reason I will probably read the next few is because of buddy reading. The only group I think this is for are the readers who enjoy philosophy.
Love philosophy hated TBP, so idk who the book is for lol
@@zachzackzakI also love philosophy and saw the moral dillema with the nihilistic approach liu took in regard to the first contact. It gets explored more in book 2 to great extents so I should say its more prevalent in the sequels
This is perfect timing. I'm approaching the middle of "Book of Skulls" and felt my attention waning. Now, I'm motivated to finish. Thanks!
I discovered you channel a few weeks ago, and I'd like to say thanks for all of the great suggestions for lesser known authors. I've always enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy books, but it's nice to get some suggestions for different books.
What a relief! I thought at first you were going to say you *liked* Three Body Problem. I couldn't even get through the first book and felt maybe I just didn't get it.
BTW I followed your recommendation and read A Fire Upon The Deep...excellent! I'm now deep into your #1 rated novel Blindsight and so happy to discover it. I've had to look up countless terms and it's not easy but the story and characters make the effort worth it. A vampire commander? So cool.
100% same. And also really liked A Fire Upon The Deep.
Have you tried A deepness in the sky, by Vernor vinge ? A great book
@@baptistejanin9615 I concur. What a great book
If I knew how to create a gif, my first would be of you doing the Spirit Halloween spooky skeleton dance. Thank you for the lulz
Your imitations of your critics are always among the best parts of any video they appear in. 😂
Last week I saw a video from Vaush. He interviewed a Chinese-American guy who helped to explain what China is really like. This Chinese man mentioned Cixin Liu and the popularity of Three Body Problem. He said that Liu's politics are rather extreme, the guy is a flaming fascist. Of course Liu's political writing isn't translated or well known outside of China.
That's the story he told anyway. I haven't been able to confirm if what he said is true.
From the book he seems like an ultra liberal. His depiction of the future is basically a US far left wet dream.
Liu stated he supports the internment of Uyghur people in an interview with the NYT, characterising them as crazed murderers.
Why would you take any content put out by the Horse King at face value?
Absolutely agree about 3BP. I gave up on the Kindle version about a third of the way through, then managed to finish the Audible version. That's some hours of my life I won't get back. I too wondered if it's a problem of translation, but I really don't think it is.
Why keep reading a book that you loathe? I found it to be a super engaging page turner from like page 20 or so. After Wang started seeing a countdown burned into his retina I legitimately couldn't put it down (like how do you even come up with this shit Liu Cixin?) The three body game sections did kill the pacing a bit, but that's such a small problem in an overall gripping plot. The writing is functional and gets some decent "poetic" descriptions across. People pretend like the writing is the worst thing since the holocaust, I read it in Lithuanian translated from English and it was fine. I am not expecting Blood meridian from a silly sci fi book about an alien invasion. The writing was fine, the attempts comparing human feelings to environental effects ("she felt like a pillar ice" when describing that someone feels sad) were pretty cringe, but there was barely a handful of them (maybe 4 or 5, which is much better than most other Chinese books I've read, that's literally just their writing style) in the entire book. It's simply written in a very objective, clear and easy to understand way while describing some pretty complex shit. It barely uses any if at all "poetic" language and it was even unironicaly pretty funny sometimes, I would go as far as to say the writing was better than Dune, which I assume was an actual fault on the translation.
A simple line like " they tried to take my son's life away"
was translated into Lithuanian like "Jie bande atimti is mano sunaus gyvastį" which basically translates to "they tried to steal my sons aliveness" It was also the final sentence of a chapter and it felt like a punchline, I was rolling on the ground laughing after I closed to the book.
Anyway fuck you 3 body problem is good
bye
Excellent video! As I've said before for some strange reason I am now MORE interested or at least intrigued to read my copy of TBP (never read Cixin Liu, only familiar with Ken Liu's lovely short stories and fantasy novels). But returning to the point here, this video review was genuinely entertaining and instructive, jumping straight into your thoughts with critique as sharp and barbed as ever. *Your point on hard SF homework of big ideas vs. literary/literature merit/considerate prose along with that JSTOR journal article example was so SPOT ON. Great stuff
Don't read it! Just dont!
Don’t listen to other guy. You can read it and make up your own mind.
For the record, I hated the whole thing. Didn't bother to waste my time on it after 1/2 of the first book. Stink, stank, stunk. I'm with you 100%
I watched the videos of that guy who was so jazzed by it, also. Still stunk. (Quinn's Ideas was the channel, I think.) Anyway, the slipcase looks good on the shelf, so there's that. 😆
Quinn is great, but I don’t think he’s read Blood Music and Niven. Which is a shame. He’s still not as great in his reading palate.
Dawn by Octavia Butler, Blood Music by Greg Bear, The Genocides by Thomas Disch, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Bros., The Mote in God's Eye by Niven/Pournelle, were all fantastic. Also Lucifer's Hammer by Niven/Pournelle was excellent but I can't remember if you recommended that one? I never would have read any of those until watching a few of your videos and you're batting a thousand so far. Super impressive. I have a few more of your recommendations lined up yet, but I just wanted to thank you for all of those!
Have you read anything by Jack McDevitt? I just read The Engines of God and it was very serviceable. It is the antidote to the mess that was Alien Prometheus, in so far as it deals with real archaeology and real scientists investigating ancient space cultures and ancient ruins on distant planets in a way that is scientifically realistic and also with a narrative that is logical yet compelling. Somewhat reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke without being derivative of his work or style.
OMFG thank you! I have tried to explain my hate for the Three Body Problem and people just gave me "the look." I liked the first character and her life and then the second POV came in and I hated everything about being in their head. The game environment felt so clumsy like a mocking version of Snow Crash (which I also didn't really love). I just didn't care enough to continue reading. Ended up giving it to a used bookstore to get it away from me.
I fully agree about Lee and Dick (and Kavan!)
And really, anything by Tanith Lee - be it SF, fabtasy or horror - is a great read.
I tried reading 3 Body Problem, and could not get past page 100. I am a compulsive book finisher and could not go further. I skipped pages, and delved in further on ...and did so again...To call the author "influenced by Arthur C Clarke" is an insult to Clark, whose imagination engaged me from the first sentence.
“It almost read how I imagine a John Grisham novel would read,” is my new favorite literary compliment. 😂
Love the info. Have been burning through a lot of the books you have positively reviewed on this channel and mostly align with your feelings. I own TBP so I am interested to read a book you dislike to see if I am equally annoyed by it. My favorites so far from your page have been Neuromancer and I am in the middle of Solaris now and already love it. Again thanks for the thoughtful reviews.
Love this video. The nature background is so much nicer than the fireplace in so many of your videos. BTW, I also hated the 3 Body Problem, and didn't get very far before throwing it out.
Opening the video I was very afraid that you were going to like it (Three body problem). Thank god I am wrong! :D I found the characters so flat that in the end, I thought they can all die I don't care :). This review made my day :D
I loved all three of the Remembrance of Earth's Past novels. I really like your channel (and have added several books to my reading list based on your recommendations) but often find that your opinions are at odds with my own. Art, music, and literature are like that though, there is something for everyone. I appreciate your criticism even if we don't always agree.
I mean...Ready Player One was the #1 Sci-Fi novel for a bit.
Haven't read that. Is it that bad?
@@user-yg6ki7ou2y It's a very poor ripoff of Snowcrash only the writer makes the plot *entirely* about his personal obsession over 1980s culture (especially 1980s youth culture). IT is very, very cringy to read, almost like a bad fanfic. Also, much has been said of his characterization of women.
There's actually a whole podcast named after the book, 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, which reviews famously terrible books.
I'd like to add The Martian. God, what a dry slog that was...
you should be able to find excerpts from RPO online fairly easily. they’re truly astonishing
The 2010s was a pretty bad decade. It was like someone put reddit in charge of all culture for a bit.
I coincidentally finished The Book of Skulls this week too. I loved it. It somehow felt both dated and contemporary at the same time. I can see how the more "sensitive" readers would find it distasteful but it never bothered me. Whenever it did drift more toward the distasteful I just chalked it up to its time period and "that's Silverberg." It was also the perfect length and paced very well. I would put it just ahead of Dying Inside as my favorite Silverberg.
I would love to see a video about some more modern SF, I have found myself sticking to the older works, as my ventures into newer works have been consistently dissapointing.
You should start more of your videos with a review of a best seller or lauded newer modern book. Highly entertaining. I always appreciate your off the beaten path reviews but often wish I knew what you might say about something more dominant in the mainstream of current sci-fi, or fantasy. This video was a good balance of both.
My wife and I had the same issues with book that you had. Can’t move on in the series.
I agree, I never got behind the idea that the "big ideas" can make up for poor writing and a lack of plot. There are plenty of author's who can do both (such as LeGuin and Vernor Vinge). I choose "soft" sci-fi with great writing over hard sci-fi with bad writing every time.
I agree completely. I was able to finish it, but I got to the end and couldn't care less about going on to the other two books. It wasn''t quite as bad as Ready, Player One, but almost. Your description of the plot as glacial was spot on. I couldn't keep the characters straight because they had no personalities whatsoever. The book was a physics textbook thinly disguised as a novel.
I tried. I really did, but I had to abandon TBP unfinished. I didn't even bother to notice how far I got, I was that bored by it. I read The Electric Forest as a teen and was blown away by it.
If you, like me, have been reading S.F. (science fiction) for over 45 years and keep coming across a special type of enthusiastic comments and reviews, your instinct tells you in advance, that certain books are completely overrated and actually quite weak. These books often only aim to mimic much better originals and regularly focus on surface effects but are unable to recognize the true meaning and quality and character drawing of the original work. A good example from the past was "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson, where he attempted to surpass the style and action of William Gibson and others from the 80s - but achieved little more than stringing together one exaggerated cliché after another, making everything faster, bigger, louder and (actually not) cooler. And I had the same feeling as back then when I read what many of it's fans had to say about "The Three-Body Problem." a couple of years ago.
One thing that reliably points to b.s. nowadays is the sheer size of books and trilogies etc. The authors - and unfortunately a rising amount of readers - don't grasp that BIG ideas don't require big volumes. The biggest ideas are best incubated in the small form of short stories and novellas and need to grow and unfold nowhere else than in the mind of the reader. The author who achieves this is a great one. Authors who need thousands of pages to convey a 'big' idea, on the other hand, are more likely to be penny-a-liners.
Thank you. I tried reading the Three Body Problem and could not get through it, and then I tried listening to it and could not get through it. I'm done with it.
I 100% agree about 3BP. I kept trying to give it a 'pass' because of translation, but it just... fails. Suddenly my faith in Hugo and Nebula Award lists is shaken.
My faith in those awards was shaken by 1970.
"Suddenly" 😹 Half the Nebula award books I found to be unreadable.
The original chinese is considered badly written among chinese readers + ken liu is a good writer from what ive read of his + the author actually says the english translation is an improvement
It was third in my voting form for the Hugos. Remember it was a puppy affected year.
I thought the translation is part of what made it interesting. It was the boring one of the series. Dark Forest and Deaths End are scary
Love seeing someone else discover Tanith Lee :) A pleasure to find your review!
You make fair points about 3BP, some of which I had realized during my read. I enjoyed the trilogy though. I did enjoy the ideas and scope. /shrug.
Well, hip hip hooray on 3 Body Problem. Finished that tedious, pallid, uneventful and colorless book. Can't call it a story. Decided I would not subject myself to more of that writing and passed on the subsequent volumes too.
Thank you! Good to see you in good health and natural scenery looks great. Great reviews as usual. TBP is very weak book in terms of writing. It got some interesting ideas, but that doesn't save it from dullness. Also I don't think that translation is the case. For example we got plenty of books translated from Japanese and prose there is great and beautiful.
Thank You Matt!
I too suffered the Emperors New Clothes syndrome with this book. And *I* am very willing to make allowances for translation, and a host of other issues. I have found good bits in it. Occasionally.
BUT HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH DO **SO MANY** PEOPLE NOT SEE ALL THE UNFORGIVABLE PROBLEMS?
STAGGERING!
I am so *tired* of trying to discuss this book politely.
I want to rant, spew lists at you of concrete reasons that it's a sloppy misbegotten mess, or even bits I'm OK with.
But I'm sure you're with me and I'm less than 2 minutes into the video.
But perhaps someday we can discuss it over a beer.
If the rest of your video inspires me to comment, I'll drop another.
Be well.
I hated it - haven't bothered with any of the other novels. I have been second guessing myself, considering it's rep, and I was reading in a bleak covid winter after a personal loss. Glad I'm not alone in my opinion.
That's interesting, i found this trilogy to be the greatest or one of the greatest sci fi books ever. I found the concepts especially in the 2nd and the 3rd book to be literally mind blowing and opening the world to a new view of life. Tbf i enjoyed the story from the very beginning, so it was really easy for me to continue.
I wanna ask you if you read the project hail mary, because it has 4.5 on goodreads, everyone says its a masterpiece, but i found it really boring from the beginning. The unraveling of alien life was interesting, but the writing was so bad i wanted to just rip the pages to pieces.
@@stickyy_fingaas Read it, thought it OK. No firm opinions, beyond that I felt the protagonist's personality was too close to the Martian. I find GoodReads a very useful tool for tracking what I've read, but the ratings are beyond useless.
@@vortimer2351 i haven't read the martian but im gonna watch the movie and if i like it maybe I'll give project hail mary another shot
As soon as I saw your video for 3BP show up I thought "Oh goody!" I read it a year or two ago based on a recommendation and, while I didn't hate it as much as you, I was pretty disappointed. I found there were a few interesting elements like the science blocking interference with human development. The first part was interesting in that I had never read any SF based in China, particularly that period. The weird virtual "game" was bewildering enough to keep me wondering what was going on for a while. All in all it was pretty ponderous, but I thought I'd try the second one to see where it went with the setup.
While most reviews I've seen say The Dark Forest is the best of the three, it left a really bad taste in my mouth. It seemed even more ponderous that the first, and the characterization was poor, but I haven't heard anyone discuss one major problem I had with it. There seemed to be a foundational assumption of predetermination built into it that I just couldn't buy. In retrospect it manifested in 3BP in the whole idea that by blocking one area of physics, all significant progress could be halted... okay, I guess I can go with that for the story's sake. But I feel like the philosophy shows up in many aspects of the book from the plot to the characterization. But most obviously, the idea that an entire field of science could be derived from a handful of basic axioms, and the implications would be so incontrovertible that there was no escaping arriving at the same conclusions, to the point that multiple people would jump to the same course of morally problematic actions, almost simultaneously in one case, was hard to swallow. I'm pretty good at swallowing my disbelief when it is needed to get to the good parts, but so much of the book was colored by this sense of unjustifiable determinism that there weren't many good parts left. SPOILER: Not that it really matters to the plot aside from illustrating it's implausibility, but don't get me started on greeting an openly hostile superior and mysterious power by lining up your entire fleet in a tidy grid and waiting for them to arrive.
Anyway, I selfishly wish you would read the next book just so I can know if I'm being unreasonable :-)
11:45 Surely you can't be suggesting that people with opinions we may disagree with could actually be capable of voicing those opinions in an eloquent manner.
I have to say your review of 3 body problem helped explain to me why I read the first book, then bought the second but still haven't picked it up in like over a year. I found book one kinda interesting but nothing about it grabbed me. I figured maybe one just has to read the full series to really get it, but I can't seem to find the energy just yet. I'm curious though, what is it, what psychological or sociological explanation is there for such broad praise and popularity for 3 body?
Purchased the book just a few days ago based on a friend's recommendation - I'll still read it, but man do I have almost zero interest now.
I agree with the general sentiment of many of your points, about disregarding the quality of the writing in sci-fi or fantasy, about lacklustre commonplace similes, all that made wholeheartedly enjoy this video :D
But now I wonder about the books popularity and I REALLY want to know what exactly people see in it. So I'll read it!
When I finished the Three Body Problem, I was baffled by all the rave reviews. I wondered if I'd picked up another book called The Three Body Problem by mistake and everyone else was raving about a different book than the one I just read. While I didn't hate it, I was left with no desire to continue reading the trilogy.
This novel isn't particularly your usual genre but have you ever read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy? It's a piece of literary fiction (sorta? It's a fictionalized telling of very real historical events) and the prose is just on another level entirely.
I agree that McCarthy's prose is really unique. I don't really care for some of the content of his books, but the prose alone makes them worth reading. Love writers who can say a lot with just a few words.
Another writer whose prose is outstanding(imo) is Hillary Mantel
I own the TBP series but haven't read them yet... but now I'm super curious how something you find so unreadable becomes so popular...?
I am about 3/4 through series and here's my opinion. If you decide to read it, dedication is key. Read all 3, because they're getting better as I go. The writing style isn't amazing, but there's more action and more intriguing ideas as the series progresses. Just my 2 cents
Here's an idea for a video: What sci-fi books would you recommend to aspiring sci-fi writers? Granted, mostly from an audience point view, which is always important to keep in mind.
This review seems about right. Not read it myself but I read _Ball Lightening_ and thought it mildly bad. There were two or three ideas that made me say." oh wow "; those moments were just about enough to keep me reading. Also enough to stop me reading TBP.
Wow, Electric Forest. So far it’s two-for-two that got a DNF. I just didn’t find myself caring about this novel and moved on to something else. Tanith Lee was an excellent prose stylist in another book I read years ago called Dark Dance.
Haha, I feel less bad now about not having read The Three Body Problem yet. Thank you!
I guess I have to subscribe because you're one of the only book reviewers I've ever heard say that the Three Body Problem kinda sucks, and I completely agree.
I always find it entertaining watching people discuss Book Of Skulls because I read it when I was a teenager and all I remember about it was "yeah it was good". Will have to re-read.
And he's back! Thought for a minute MX paradise was making you soft 🙂 Appreciate your passion in what you share of these books and helping me ass to my To Read list.
I'm so glad you've busted out with this opinion. The writing was pedestrian. Big ideas are not enough. By the end of the first book I simply did not care.
I stumbled upon your channel tonight, specifically your review of Book of the New Sun. I enjoyed that and while I like Shadow of the Torturer, my thoughts and crits largely align with yours. This led me to browse your videos and this is the one I chose next. And I am in complete agreement with you, and I respect that you are saying so in the face of what seems like near-universal adulation. I think that there is definitely something lost in translation but to your point, my suspicion is there wasn't much lost. I ultimately gave up on the book, and just went to the wiki to get a sense of the "Big Ideas". Some are indeed interesting, but I am unwilling to pay the reading cost to be disappointed in how little they are likely actually explored.
Liked and subbed.
😂 only saw the first 39 seconds till now, but it would have surprised me to hear anything else.
I wonder what is going on with this book. I saw the Quinn’s Ideas videos on this and just from that I could not believe the book could be any good. The more videos I watched the less I could believe it was worth reading.
Got the audiobook and so far… terrible. Waste of an audible credit.
Dammit...I got the audiobook for this several years ago, and only got through a couple hours of it before giving up. I've questioned why, and have since kept an eye out for it, because it always gets such good reviews. Yesterday I finally ordered the book on Ebay... Now I wish I hadn't.
Give it a chance. I found 3 body 50% fascinating and 50% a dull grind... Definitely strange pacing. Turns out, it's kinda like a really long introduction to the dark forest... So far, dark forest is flawed and has it's challenges, but there's some pretty spectacular payoffs and I'm not quite halfway through yet. As for death's end, I've heard hyperpolarized opinions on that which I can't comment on yet...
I liked the Three Body Problem, and loved the Three Body Problem after I read the trilogy a second time. But you ARE NOT WRONG. Review is spot on. But I loved it. Go figure.
Agreed. Purchased a copy of The Three Body... in the summer, gave up like halfway through, it's not worth your time if you're into hard SF 😐
Thank you for eloquently articulating why TBP is garbage. I am in violent agreement.
tell me about it. complete juvenile level crap.
I will humbly and violently second that motion. Superb denunciation of an over-hyped dull story with piss-poor character-less plodding work of fiction / bordering on Scientific American article.
What if I told you, the first book in the series is actually not very good. And the real genius comes in book 2 and 3. It's a shame some people don't understand that when people rave about three body problem, they are actually referring to the entire series, not just book 1. The name "three body problem" sticks in peoples heads more than "remembrance of earths past", so people call the entire series three body problem
What if I told that you're making several assumptions and sweeping generalizations about people you've never met? Go post that whiny garbage on your own channel with all the other incredible content.@@keyput415
« garbage » is a strong word. But I guess American readers are quite demanding.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it's like just reading jstor or doing homework. I personally loved TBP but it was the first scifi series I read while all I was used to reading was jstor and textbooks.
Interesting take! My uncle said he wasn’t impressed with it at all. He’s read an absolute mountain of science fiction books and said it was just incredibly dull with poor character development. I’ve yet to read it and will make up my own mind as to what I think but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard it getting a hammering 😂
Agreed, any author or work hyped so much is suspect. But, you still have to investigate...
There is also the flip side of that observation. Any author or work canceled so much, is probably worth a look, and may be worth a lot more!
ELECTRIC FOREST, DAY BY NIGHT (also by Tanith Lee) and BOOK OF SKULLS were among the books that got the teen me into SF. I reread them as an adult and was so impressed by how well written they were, and would recommend them to anyone. Good and accurate analysis. Lee was popular in her lifetime but didn't get the acclaim she did for her style, which is as far from the evolved-pulp/Hemingway-esque straightforward-dry style of so much SF. Silverberg had a streak of about 8 books in the late sixties/early seventies that is just amazing even today for the scope and quality of the books.
So glad I ran into this review - I thought I was the only one who didn’t care at all for TBP. Agree about the characters and the writing - I just don’t get all the hoopla over this book and I’m glad to see so many comments in agreement. Also - full disclosure I have a background in physics - the technical aspects are simply ridiculous and without any basis in science. I know it’s sci-fi but still, it should be rooted in some thread of real science/physics imo. Otherwise, it might just as well be magic/fantasy.
I read all three. Its a lot.... But there were some cool scenes, and there was a sadness and bleakness that was remarkable. The end of the third book is also haunting- I think about it a lot. I totally get why Bookpilled doesn't like it. He makes some good points. Interesting review.
Same here. 3BP bored me to death and I could not understand all the recommendations that preceded my reading of that book.
TBP is “The Celestine Prophecy” of SF, a novel with uninteresting people doing next to nothing. The protagonist is tasked with investigating mysterious suicides and instead spends three chapters playing a video game!? Do not waste your time on this book.
Translation can be a real challenge depending on the style ofnthe writer. I do not know if it was the issue with Liu's, but as a French speaker, I cannot imagine how my favourite SF book ever "La Horde du Contrevent", written in French, could be (well) translated in any other language. The work on the words and their rythm, meaningful in the story telling, and the punctuation, would be just impossible to translate. And yet. They are absolutely critical in the story telling.
I recently read this book after all of the hype it's received and oh my god I hated it. I had to put it down for a week 30 pages before the end because it was getting so painful to read. Just to come back and finish it and take another break from reading because it burnt me out so badly.
i liked the series but tbh i couldnt remember the first book by the time i finished it. The ideas in the later books are really neat but... yea.. getting to it might be a sludgy experience.
Be glad you spared yourself from the 2nd book. It was absolute torture. I couldn't make it to the 3rd.
I read Book of Skulls about 15 or so years ago and it was unique experience in my reading up to that point. Different to anything had read to that point, and I agree it could just as easily fall in to regular fiction, horror or fantasy. I was very interested in hearing your opinion on it, thank you; I will also add Tanith Lee to my ever-expanding reading list now as she sounds like a really interesting author to explore
I have never had any interests in reading Three Body Problem based on a lot of opinions of online reviewers and who have seemingly similar tastes to myself in the past - and after watching this I am even less inclined to waste time reading something that is likely to offer very little return on the time invested in it.
3BP Agreement Meter: 100% YEP!
When the virtually sketched characters entered an inane virtual reality, I bailed. It was a Trailer Park Boys 💩-🌀
I enjoyed TBP once I was able to dredge through some of the painfully long character introductions. The second book is more entertaining and moves the story along at a better pace than the first. People watching the netflix adaptation are lucky that season 1 isn't just a full coverage of the first book.
Wow! For once we are in complete agreement on one of your multi book review videos. Although that particular Lee story I haven't read, I do agree that her prose is generally beautiful. We are in tune.
I'm currently about 3/4 through it. Good enough to finish, but nothing to rave about. Yes, I agree about the writing. I was avoiding the book because so much depends on translation. It has a lot of flowery language, which I'm familiar with from reading Chinese classics like Outlaws From the Marsh, Journey to the West, etc. It's not my style preference. Would I start it from zero knowing what it's turned out to be? Nah, there's just too much to read in life. Choose wisely, my friends.
I agree, I heard so much good stuff about it but I was very dissapointed. I then went in search of a better way to find out about books and I found this channel
I felt the way you feel about 3BP, about fahrenheit 451, the whole book is “my heart fluttered out like a butterfly”. But to everyone else that is a literary classic??? It’s a good book in terms of ideas and influence but it’s not the best written
Dark Forest is... a significantly larger challenge. It has one great idea and it's in the title.
I disagree. The idea/necessity of the wall-facers is a fascinating human solution to the problem sophons present, the ultimate weapon that decimates humanity is unique in its simplicity and effectiveness/possibility, and the way the invasion is halted, essentially weaponizing The Dark Forest, are all original and fascinating ideas.
@@AwesomeTingle I can get behind the wallfacer one, but I also found the presentation to be... silly? at times. That's on me.
I unfortunately disagree with the fleet scene. (Spoilers!! for all who haven't read Dark Forest)
It felt like an insult to my intelligence that not a single character brought up the Trojan Horse. I could see the disaster coming from 4 light-years away (though I assumed it was a bomb) and it broke all immersion that no one in their military command or the scientific community even broached the idea. The sequence made no internal sense and amounts to what we call an idiot plot: it only makes sense when the characters (in this case hundreds of thousands of people) act like idiots. Broke the book.
I'm glad you liked it and I'm glad it exists to bring people into sci-fi. Preferences will always be different, was just so disappointed as I liked 3 Body. I'll try Death's End in a few years
@@e.matthews That's a fair point, as a reader I knew something was going to go wrong. What was interesting to me wasn't that the attack was successful, but HOW that attack was successful. I really like the droplet as a weapon concept - it's feasible, comprehensible, and unstoppable.
@@AwesomeTingle I was waiting for there to be a rational explanation involving the use of the German wallfacer's delusion-inducing machine. It wouldn't have made operational sense, I think, but it would have explained the unearned optimism leading to them putting the entire military complex into one basket beside an unknown advanced alien artefact.
Anyways, happy reading!
3 body problem's main appeal, I think, is the geeky game it plays over and over of inventing some spectacular weapon based on a slightly oversimplified version of some idea from exotic physics. That and its near-total disconnect from American politics.
"Like someone a microwaved mug of tap water and threw some unground coffee beans in it", Hilarious!
Hshshs just now, im about to finish the dark forest
Dang! I just bought it based on my brother’s advice. I really struggle with poorly written books.
Something similar happened to me with the books, but then, I watched the Chinese series, and I cannot recommend it enough.
I read book of skulls 2 or so months ago and the whole time I didn't know if I was going to finish the book liking it, disliking it, hating it, or loving it. Silverberg has at least 2 books I would put in my top 10 books ever but I think I ended up only liking this one.
Lol i knew you would hate Three Body.
I really enjoyed it, but it was also literally my first sci fi book. I was so so into it, and it got me into the genre, but as I’ve read more, its place in my mind has gradually slid downward. It was exactly what I needed at the time, but I’ve definitely ‘grown up’ quickly.
ALTHOUGH i will say, the next two books are INFINITELY better than the first. The prose and characters only get get marginally better, if at all. But 2 and 3, especially 3, have got to be where the “ideas ideas” reputation comes from. like holy shit. Book 1 is just half of your pinky toenail comparatively.
Still, if you really hated the first that much you might not love them either lol
love the scenery and the commentary.
I disliked it, too. I kind of wondered if the translation was a big part of the problem. It felt stiff and awkward. On another note...you're still wrong about Heinlein. There are 3 or 4 of his books that I absolutely love...lol!! Yes, some are so-so, but that's probably true for how we react to most writers.
Your review of *_The Three Body Problem_* almost matches mine word for word. I was especially annoyed that it won a Hugo.
The thing that gets me is when people tell me it's "Hard Science Fiction" ('cause it's SO not). I laugh imagining people reading all those pages and pages of pointless exposition.
A book with a couple of interesting ideas buried in extremely poor execution.