Reviews for Books in The Remembrance of Earth's Past series

by Cixin Liu

I've read all of the 3 books in this series. There are 3 reviews of those books for an average score of 3.67 (out of 4).

I rated this series

overall and said:

It starts slow but keeps growing and evolving into something extremely cool. The flat writing and characters don't ultimately hold it back, but it's prime for an adaptation (which it's getting a few of).

Book #1

Very interesting concept, but told very slowly. I liked the added political context of cultural revolution china, but lack of cultural competency on my own part made it a bit hard to follow. I think it definitely _can_ go somewhere cool, but I'm not sure how long that'll take. The physics was neat and the story ultimately an interesting one, it was just a bit of a slog to get through.

2023-03-15
Book #2

Really picked up after the first one. Characters are still bad and the writing is still pretty dry, but this one leaned much more heavily into the speculative sci-fi aspect that was promised. Loved the time jumps too- great to see how everything played out over years and years. No clue where the third one will go, but I'll definitely be reading it (eventually).

2023-07-28
Book #3

Pretty spectacular in its scope and scale. Is a stellar conclusion to a trilogy with a slow burn. I think this is my favorite of the 3 - it focused the most on the things I found interesting: examining humanity in the face of large threats and classic hard scifi. It's a pretty packed book, but it flowed well. The characters and prose are still pretty weak, but the plot and philosophy cement it in the canon of science fiction.

2024-03-16

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