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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

Good books but the protagonist in the 3rd book was INFURIATING.

I couldn't make it through book 2. Book 1 set up some interesting ideas without exploring it too much, and book 2 completely moved on without exploring things, and it was slow, boring, and annoying. I read the wikipedia summary and realized I was much better off forgetting the entire trilogy.

Luo also wasn't THAT much better, mainly because he's an author self-insert that got to get his perfect mail order bride and then proceeded to play his role without any fail or mistakes once he has to step up. But the whole idea of the Dark Forest concept was IMHO legitimately good science fiction. But yeah, Cheng is a complete and utter moron. Maybe that makes her human, but I stopped reading Death's End halfway through and looked up the remaining plot summary on Wikipedia. I don't know if the author had a real plan while writing the story, because the series begins really strong and then just runs out of good ideas.

All of the books follow this pattern where 2/3rds or more is split between really bad and unlikeable characters meandering and waxing philosophically for whole chapters at a time–putting the plot in limbo–and terse, emotionless, transactional conversations sprinkled in to break up the log jam with boring exposition. It was absolutely infuriating, and I originally quit in the middle of book 2 because I could not stand another second of Luo, until my reading buddies at work hounded me to finish. They would all climax with a sudden scramble to wrap everything up in an interesting way, but the problem became worse with each subsequent book. I really don’t get how this series took off.

> I really don’t get how this series took off.

My guess: The novelty of Science Fiction from a Chinese Author, which isn't commonly translated to English, and a legitimately interesting SciFi concept. If you read the plot summary on Wikipedia, it actually sounds amazing, it's just that the books themselves don't deliver on the premise nearly as well.

I only read the first book and that was only after having watched the Chinese dramatisation of it that I really enjoyed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20242042/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_...

Apparently Netflix are due to do an english version of it too.

Sadly being produced by D&D. After their massive Game of Thrones season 8 fuck up, I'm not holding my breath.

Then again, maybe it'll be fine because all the source material is finished and they don't have to fail at writing the end of the story on their own.

I didn't realise that.

I was already somewhat sceptical as I heard that the story is being moved to the U.S. which seemed odd, but it was apparently signed off by Liu Cixin.

I'm still a bit in shock as to how bad GoT season 8 was. So many plotlines and character development were just shredded, burnt and then thrown away. And that battle looked impressive on-screen (if you like watching a black screen with little points of light) but just made absolutely no sense tactically.

If only there was someone else who could have written the ending of the GoT for them.

Still waiting...

the first 4 seasons, where they had complete source, were really good; fell off a cliff afterwards obviously - they should do OK with a complete trilogy, though personally I don't understand the interest in those books beyond the premise.

Eh, as long as they have source material they're okay.

For me the second book was way worse.

The second book was by far the best.

The first has a bit too much lead-up. The third is a bit too philosophical.

How so?

I don't want to give any spoilers so I've converted my comment into Trisolaran (ROT13):

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