The second is my favorite by far as well, but I find it funny how it's described as amazing Sci-Fi when I have to describe the plot. Half the book is

spoilers

The result of granting a nerd all the resources of the Earth at his disposal. He promptly uses it to find the perfect waifu and seduces her in his idyllic European villa.

That's not Sci-Fi; That's a power fantasy as old as time.

May reflect on how different people read things differently. I agree that a lot of pages are spent on what you've just described, but to me it was a weird and minor plot point, and I never mention it because I don't see how it's worth mentioning.

The game-theoretic aspects of the book, on the other hand, and the final comeback of aforementioned nerd, are something I like to point out when summarizing this book.

I enjoyed that part, but he could have done it in a 20 page short story.

I'm not sure if Liu Cixin is emblematic of Chinese science fiction, but the services of a more aggressive editor seem to be missing. Imho, it would have vastly improved the series, and possibly cut it down to a single volume.

The game theory parts of the book made me pretty annoyed personally. He's oversimplifying a problem, ignoring obvious compounding factors, and then proclaiming that it's the only possible solution and everybody else must have made the same flawed assumptions and be operating under the same principles.

And then of course everybody does operate under those principles and feel compelled to act irrationally as a result.

Because resources are limited the only solution is to blow up almost all of the resources to make sure nobody else gets them. The idea that there might be natural limits (even basic thermodynamic ones) to growth apparently never occurs to the author. It's kind of shocking how casual some unnamed alien species is about literally destroying the universe.

You described like 90% of Chinese webnovels.

I still read some of them from time to time, but theyre all basically the same.

Interesting to see how that translates to actual hard-copy books as well.

What's a webnovel? Fanfiction? Or like an online Japanese visual novel?

Guessing, but maybe an original novel published freely on the web? That’s what the name appears to imply.

Yep, it's novels published online in a chapter by chapter format. You'll also find translations of some of them, but beware that some sites provide automatic translations, which are naturally a bit wonky. Here's an example site, specialized in the wuxia genre: https://www.wuxiaworld.com/

> That's a power fantasy as old as time.

Yes, if by "old" you mean "dumb".

I couldn't finish this insufferably cringe-worthy book. Sorry.