Peter M. Last

RANTS AND RAMBLES

• • Disclaimer Time: When I review books, it is my job to discuss both strengths and weaknesses of the books in question. Weaknesses and inconsistencies seem to be the easiest to discuss and pick apart and so tend to dominate my discussion. Nevertheless, any particular rant (and, yes, they can be long-winded) does not necessarily have special bearing on my overall opinion. Please refer to my overall star rating for my unified opinion of the book as a whole. Additionally, if you happen to disagree with my book rating (and many people probably will) there’s nothing wrong with that. These reviews are simply my personal opinions and are intended to help readers who enjoy my writing and/or the types of books I enjoy to navigate the plethora of options available to them. Use them as the tool they are but do not assign importance to them which they do not deserve.
  • The big-brained concepts of Three-Body dominate the book, and everything else takes a back seat to them. They require a lot of groundwork for the reader to understand which leads to exposition dumps galore (possibly the most enthralling part of any story!). Most noticeable and egregious are when these dumps are not necessary (see the next rant after my next rant). The biggest problem with this focus on concept and the excessive time spent on downloading information to the reader is that there is little time to develop the characters or the actual story. This same weakness exists in the movie Tenet, but where that story was able to couple the brain-busting bits with tight, exciting action, Three-Body remains slow and boring throughout. There are no deep, compelling characters, and the storyline is bland and limp, pockmarked with holes and logical inconsistencies.
  • If you chose to read Three-Body, get settled in for a lot of explaining. The concepts are big-brained to begin with and require a fair amount of baseline information, a daunting undertaking, but not impossible. Yet the author bungles his way through this task. Rather than weave the information into the story in a sensible way which does not break the action, this novel spends most of its time explaining with just a few breaks for “action.” Sometimes it reads a lot like a lecture from a pretty good physics teacher. Sometimes, it mimics a child who feels the need to explain that they got bread. They put jelly on one piece. They put peanut butter on the other piece. They put the pieces together. They cut the sandwich in half. They put both halves on a plate. They carried the plate to the table. They sat down. They picked up one piece of the sandwich…You get the picture. I don’t know why some authors feel the need to explain every detail as through the audience is too stupid to understand, but it is insulting and an amateur mistake.
  • An even bigger problem is when this explaining is done after the information has already been expertly woven into the narrative. This is the case with the Earth Trisolarian Organization (ETO). The ETO is illuminated in terms of purpose, origin, factions, membership, and more over the course of the book. Then chapter 29 is devoted to explaining all of this again in excruciating text-book style detail. It feels like the author is worried the reader is too stupid to piece together the information on their own. It’s insulting and absolutely massacres the momentum of the book.
  • Barely Spoilers: Chapter 17 is all about human computing, that is, making circuits and ultimately a whole computer out of humans (or in this case, Trisolarians). This concept is laughable on several different levels from the inevitability of human error (the main area computers out-performs us) to the speed at which it would be possible (another area computers excel) to the sheer number of humans involved (it only takes 30 million according to the book, though in reality this would still affect a computing speed much less than even the most basic computer). Even when it is revealed that Trisolarians communicate telepathically (or something to that effect; I was fuzzy on the details) and that the humans and flags described are just an analogy, it is still comical in the utter impossibility of the concept. And this is on top of the massive number of pages devoted to the explanation of how computing nodes are made of three people with two flags apiece, how AND gates and OR gates work, and a general rundown of computer principles. This feels like a pretty good computer science professor explaining hard concepts which is great for a classroom but terrible for a novel. Beyond these main problems, I have a plethora of nitpicks such as why the Trisolarians devoted thousands or tens of thousands of individuals to creating a boot-up progress bar, or how untold numbers of Trisolarians were killed for causing errors which locked the system up, or how this “computer” was able to continually operate for a year and two months. This entire thing is laughable in concept while in execution it is eye-roll inducing at best and gouge-your-eye-out-with-a-spoon bad at worst.
  • Minor Spoilers: Here is an excerpt from the book where a “slender young woman” kills a person. “Before anyone could react, she wrapped one of her slender arms around Pan’s neck, placed her other hand on top of his head, and, by applying her unexpected strength at just the right angle, she twisted Pan’s head 180 degrees with practiced ease. The cracks from his cervical vertebra breaking stood out against the complete silence.” I have a few problems with this. First, breaking a person’s neck, especially in this manner, requires a certain amount of strength because it relies entirely upon your own strength, unlike other defensive moves which allow a person to use their opponent’s momentum or weight against them by employing superior leverage. It is debatable a person described as “slender” would have such strength. But let’s assume they did. Placing a hand atop the person’s head would not be of any benefit as any force provided in this manner would be down into the spine rather than twisting around it (as is required to dispatch someone in this manner). It is quite difficult to kill someone by breaking their neck in this manner; however, that difficulty is magnified many times if the head is turned a full 180 degrees. This makes no sense, especially being conducted with “practiced ease.”
  • Minor Spoilers: I find it unbelievable that this protagonist, who is ostensibly a very bright, science-minded individual, would take so long to discover that the underlying principle to the seasons of the planet shown in the video game was that the planet orbited a trinary star system. Especially when the game was accessed through a website called www.3body.net. The Three-Body problem is a classic of astronomy and physics, so our protagonist must be generally daft (not borne out in the rest of the book), have a bad case of incredibly specific amnesia, or been zapped by a plot-convenience ray.
  • Spoilers: A really nice part of the book is how real the ETO feels. Sure, the reader is bludgeoned with the information in a manner I can only describe as inelegant; however, the nuance of the organization provides depth and realism in a way often missing from stories. First, there are two main factions rather than everyone being unrealistically united in action and intent. These factions have similar views but drastically different goals. One of them wants the invading aliens to enslave humanity to forcibly make them better while the other is in favor of the aliens exterminating all human life. Introducing competing views and values rather than creating a homogenously and patently evil antagonistic organization sets the precedent that not everyone thinks the same way. In turn, this opens up possibilities for non-stereotypical behavior from the organization’s members. Generally, details like this serve to make the world feel bigger and the characters populating it less flat.
  • Spoilers: When the plot does finally get moving at the end of the book, it is a bit too convenient and neat to be believable much less make for an interesting read. A perfect example of this is when the protagonists use nanofilaments to stop a large sea-faring vessel. There’s a fair number of stipulations to what they are trying to do but the basic restrictions go thusly. Information on computers on the ship must be recovered but the people on the ship will likely destroy it (or at least may be able to destroy it) if they are given enough warning. Consequently, the operation must be speedy; however, the protagonists do not know where on the ship the computers are. What they come up with is a plan to string nanofilaments across a channel through which the vessel will pass. Filaments are a half meter apart and sharp enough to literally cut the ship (and presumably anyone inside) into half meter increments. This will neutralize the threat of the enemy destroying the computers while also bringing the ship to a halt. This is the point in an edge-of-your seat, nail-biting action sequence where problems would arise and be subsequently solved during the planning and preparing stages. Then, during the execution, things would not go exactly according to plan, and our heroes would have to adjust on the fly and solve mini problems along the way to make the plan work. In the case of Three-Body, this plan with many variables and lots of ways it could go wrong simply…works. It’s an interesting idea, but the bland and mundane execution makes it a pretty forgettable scene. And this is representative of the rest of the book.