Imo, the second book was exceptional and as a standalone, one of the best sci-fi books of the past decade.
The second on the other hand, had no idea where it was going, no characterisation at all - or terribly cliched attempts, and one of the worst books I've read. I honestly couldn't see the appeal that so many seem to see. I didn't bother with the third!
Like I said for the first, I thought the writing quite rough, but overall the book and plot carried it along to the end easily enough - I enjoyed it despite its obvious flaws and weak characters. I was looking forward to a second book of an author getting into his stride... I was very disappointed.
The whole of the first half of the book is a clumsy to the point it feels like an entirely different author. Nothing happens and it goes quite literally nowhere. How much is the different translator? I have no idea.
The protagonist has no idea why he's selected, isn't interested, can't be bothered and sort of blunders through the book. For some unknown reason the aliens really need to kill this clueless annoying asshole. Whatever happens, somehow he's still the most important dude on the planet, so he gets to keep blundering on, and keep being an asshole. That is entirely how I felt about the writing too: no idea why he's selected, isn't interested, can't be bothered and sort of blunders through the book where nothing happens.
Somewhere on the entire planet is his perfect woman - so he gives his assistant some cliche teen shopping list - did the author just watch the film Weird Science that day? Except it's Weird Science without the humour. What the hell is all this bullshit for? All so the UN can kidnap her to persuade him to work? ROFL. OK, at this point I want the aliens to win - if this is the best guy humans have, we deserve to be alien lunch, and soon! It's all so ridiculously stupid that it's easily the most memorable part of the book. The writing has descended to school essay standard now. Then the whole of the wallfacing idea mostly doesn't work - it's clumsy and shows the gaping holes constantly, sometimes with a few bits of hand waving to try and carry it.
Then finally, when I'm about to put the book in the compost, there's an all too brief section of decent and compelling story telling. Except I'd mostly lost interest at this point. That quarter or third of the book could have been a decent basis for all of it. Lose well over half a book and the plot wouldn't change!
Then the clumsy utterly unbelievable ending. Yeah right.
Overall? 2/10
Don't care what happens in 3. Unlikely to read another by him.
A lot of sci-fi is plot driven, characters are just vectors for the ideas, and I found the big ideas in The Dark Forest really interesting. I'd never thought to critically about the Sagan/space optimist "people in bear suits" view of alien contact before reading the book (in spite of seeing plenty of space horror movies). And for all its faults, it maintained a tension and mystery that kept me interested to the end.
I also had trouble keeping names and even genders straight, the only character I had a connection to was Da Shi (the hard boiled cop).
Do you mean something different?
The whole section of the book/civilization where everyone is feminized and most of the toxic male behaviors have been repressed is depicted as a "bad thing" leading to weak people and a weak civilization.
The first book was decent, certainly good, science fiction, with an endearing new scooby mystery at every chapter leading into another mystery. But the other two were bad. Going on in bad tolkien-ism (I've beared reading the Silmarillion three times) with overlong descriptions of unimportant details and derailing into ideology every two paragraphs.
Try to put the PC for our time aside, and think about this again. In the cold and cruel universe, what would survive?
Advance, advance at all costs.
Edit:
You don’t have to save the universe in bold to become a character.
Being paper thin and then destroy the 3 dimensional universe, on behalf of the will of mankind?
Also, the goal isn't/shouldn't be growth at all cost in a story. The axiom of Liu Cixin is his theory of "The Dark Forest", which is what it is, a literary axiom, not an universal truth.
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Chen Xin is selected to represent the will of the mankind (or she would've been purged quickly after showing the inabilities) so the character should be thin in this sense, which reflects the very opposite character, `Thomas Wade`.
So I understand the story as, that humanity chose to destroy itself in honor of what they value.
I interpreted it differently, the fact that some male characters can be less empathetic and could potentially solve some crisis does not mean that all men or all women are X, I am bad with names so I don't remember them, but in the end why did the man let her take the final decision about the secret project/attack ? (it seemed out of character or a way to place the hard decision on other IMO)
One of the most out of character decisions event in the books. As with any "out of character action" a character can take, the blame lies in the author. Like in the question "who would win between Superman and Goku ?" the answer is in the author, not the characters. The author forced a narrative to prove the point that Cheng Xin wasn't able to do the hard choices.
Edit: In reply to Aeolun (couldn't see a reply button below your post):
ehhh, Ye Wenjie is fairly central in the first book (I'm halfway past the second one)
Were we reading the same books? With all the Cultural Revolution trauma in Three Body Problem?
That is the only one of the three I've read, but to me a huge theme was information control. The cultural revolution as the historical event, and the single-particle invasion fleet interfering with humanity's science as the futuristic event. Both analogies for each other. And the ambivalent question underlying it of "what if this is necessary for survival"?