Added this series to my list a few months back. Read book 1 about a month ago and I’m about 70% through book 2.
I’m struggling to understand why this book is so recommended here and on Amazon. Perhaps the English translation version is just bad?
The pacing is terrible and the plot is meandering (to put it nicely). And overall the character arcs and storyline is confusing. It has a ton of filler content that doesn’t add much and feels like it needs an editor to chop it down / tighten it up.
Every once in a while there are some novelties, like droplets (book 2). But last night while reading I was just skipping pages hoping to get it over with.
Was hoping for Alastair Reynolds but this is more Ayn Rand.
I hate quitting a book but I’m just about there. Throwing out a lifeline in case I’m missing something…
The Dark Forest is my favorite of what I consider to be an incredible pulp sci/speculative/fi trilogy. I feel it’s excellent, and don’t see at all how you could compare Cixin Liu’s writing, or Joel Martinsen, let alone Ken Liu’s, excellent translations, to Ayn Rand.
I’m not comparing the writing to Ayn Rand, just the overall experience of my own expectations based on what the larger reading community recommends.
I had lots of people tell me to read Ayn Rand (specifically Atlas Shrugged) and thought it was pretty dense.
It’s difficult for me to be critical of the author as I suspect reading this in Chinese or whatever the native version was would be a completely different experience.