Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy

[horangi]

Resurrecting this thread since I just finished Death's End myself.  Since the Netflix version is looking to wrap up the production this year, I figured it would start getting more interest anyways.  I'll spoiler the rest for now.
 

Spoiler

Overall I echo the rest of the thread that the story was quite a trip, if really really dark in the end.  I went into it completely blind and spent the first book speculating on what the plot was going to be (I originally thought it was going to be a simulation universe with the physics problems being glitches in the matrix so to speak due to the simulation not having that level of computational depth).  Of course the conclusion of the third book is just a gut punch, but awesome at the same time. 

The hard science in the first book was pretty good, if not perfect, and like Starkess, I just really liked the idea that he was introducing a lot of concepts to the more lay audience.  The Solar pulse didnt bother me since its pretty clearly 'discovered' in the book.  Yeah, the actual 3BP was a bit of stretch, but made for a really interesting plot.  Beyond the three-quarters mark of Book 1, I figured the rest is all true sci-fi anyways.  Quantum entanglement doesnt actually allow for FTL communications IRL, and I dont think his understanding of dimensionality aligns with reality, but, again needed plot points. 

I will expand, however, on some of the characterization critiques- culture differences aside, the characters do seem to be drafted from what a lonely, spurned teenager's view of what society looks like.  The lead female characters are all cold, distant, and dont really care about human relations and yet make ruinous decisions damning humanity (at least 4 times over) over some naive over-romantic notion.  The male lead characters are lonely, socially awkward, and have to 'bare the burden of the universe' on their shoulders while keeping some forlorn desire for those unobtainable cold women.  One dreams up a mail-order bride (who betrays him), one stalks another with the purchase of a star and ultimately goes through living hell over unrequited love, and even with the autistic scientist who has only like 2 pages dedicated is twice mentioned to have been unable to have a girlfriend before jumping into a black hole to spend eternity gazing back at some random girl who is star struck after the fact.   The rest of humanity is often a monolithic block that exists to judge the protagonists unfairly. There were a lot of other examples throughout, but those stuck out for me.  This was one of the few books where I kept getting drawn out to think, whoah, what is in the author's head when he was writing this.  I didnt really catch it much in the first book, which was my favorite overall, but it did seem to magnify in the later two.  

ETA: Having recently read the Foundation series, I did want to point out in fairness that a lot of classical western sci-fi does have have the problem of cardboard cutout female characters written as if the author had only read about them in a history book.