It's a sci-fi book with an impressive sense of scale. Every hundred pages or so the story zooms out; from one man's life, to a country's struggle, to a global calamity, to an interplanetary and then galactic crisis, and finally to even higher dimensions.

It does this while threading characters from each stage of "zoom" into future stages, creating for a lot of interesting cross-over plots and sub-plots.

As other commentator's have said, it also wove together Chinese culture with science fiction and history with drama very fluidly.

It was, for me personally, a very "fun" read. Kept me excited at each chapter, and I genuinely didn't know what to expect next. I highly recommend to any sci-fi fans out there, even those like me, who initially didn't think they could stomach around 1,000 pages of a translated-from-Chinese sci-fi novel.

> It's a sci-fi book with an impressive sense of scale

Which is not really new. The three books could be condensed a lot. It felt like reading the Dune prequels and sequels: useless details not advancing any plot just to make the book bigger.

It may come from the difference between western and Chinese ways to tell a story. Or the translator job. But they were snooze-fest for 300 pages then 10 pages of something happening then back to boring.

I would mostly agree, but having lived in China and studied Chinese for several years the element of Chinese culture and history intermingled with sci-fi made it a lot more intriguing to me. Also, it was a great way to practice reading Chinese.

Eh? It reads like a book translated into Chinese. It's probably one of the most not-Chinese Chinese books you can read.

Which makes it an easy first book for a beginner.

I mostly agree but I still enjoyed the story, at least until book 2, the ending of book 3 was horrendous. For the "soul" I gave it the benefit of the doubt, maybe Chinese writing different from western writing or something get lost in translation. For the characters I don't know if it's them or me dealing with Chinese names, I get lost playing games like shogun total war because of this.

I'm reading Shuǐ hǔ Zhuàn right now, there are 108 heroes along the ~2000 pages but somehow the most important remain memorable enough: Gao Chai, Song Jiang, Li Kui, Wu Gong...

See, I can even remember some names :)

Extremely pleased to find I'm not the only person to think so.

Ditto. I found the trilogy to be incredibly over-hyped. The "science" was essentially just inventing ridiculous things to make the story work. The plot started off alright, but by the end of the 2nd / beginning of the 3rd book, it really went downhill.

I thought that policeman was memorable

>It has no soul

Non-arguments like this make me actually want to check it out.

Probably because of the dark forest idea which gives a satisfying answer to the Fermi Paradox.

That "idea" has been around since the 1980s.

Seeing as we're discussing sci-fi, the super predator theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature...) is explored in the excellent Revelation Space trilogy. This series takes a lot less liberties with known physics as well.

Edit: I see you linked to the wrong sub-section there. However, overall the contrast between super-predator theory and (self-)annihilation is a bit more complex than one would think. They're not entirely binary.

On one hand, the self-annihilation idea implies that super-predator civilizations, being extremely rate to exist, would not have strong motivations for exterminating competitors.

What would possibly be the need, given the vastness of time and space, and the thermodynamic arguments given? Indeed, following this logic, the extraordinarily rare galactic survivor civilizations are almost guaranteed a long, peaceful existence.

On the other hand, it all develops on the curve of the galactic gaussian justifying possible pre-emptive defense investments. There's a difference of 3-4 or n sigmas statistics likelihood. In the former case, the likelihood of a rare rival emerging is high enough that pre-emptive defense strategies will be considered, and rudimentary systems of deterrence put in place. In the (high) n theory, it probably would not. How a civilization in the early stages of hegemony determined this fact, would be an interesting and possible civilization-saving (or destroying) feat....

Side note, haven't heard of the Revelation Space trilogy. Does it offer a workable theory for the origins of the predator dynamic?

> Side note, haven't heard of the Revelation Space trilogy. Does it offer a workable theory for the origins of the predator dynamic?

Not really, it's doesn't get any philosophical treatment and is more of a plot device. Without giving away spoilers it's more a bit like iRobot (the movie) with the predator having noble but extremely long term goals of what's best for life itself, I don't think why it does this really holds up either but it works as a plot device. It's happy with intelligent life as long as it doesn't expand into the galaxy, it doesn't act preemptively.

> On the other hand, it all develops on the curve of the galactic gaussian justifying possible pre-emptive defense investments. There's a difference of 3-4 or n sigmas statistics likelihood.

The other factor is the cost to put down potential rivals, in the dark forest universe this cost is incredibly cheap. If the cost were a lot higher then the outcome would be very different.

One thing that especially irked me about Liu was how contingent so many plot points were on specifics, and how little attention was paid to that.

E.g. If there were no FTL travel, deterrence would look very different. Especially if the average time for a civilization to become multi-planetary < the average distance to the nearest annihilation capable civilization

When I saw that URL I thought you were linking to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature...

which I think is the most memorable and haunting section title of an encyclopedia article ever written.