Books

I've read the English translations of the trilogy. If you like mystery, high-concept sci-fi, and epic storytelling, the series is pretty terrific. But if your into rounded and compelling characters, especially if those characters are women, your going to have a bad time.

Kinda reminds me of classic authors like Heinlein.

Holy shit! Me too, except I've decided I like it. It is a compelling story. It goes a bit hard on the scientific accuracy which can kind of interrupt the flow, though.

I find the most interesting part is the insight of modern Chinese commentary of recent Chinese history. I wasn't sure what popular sentiment was, or what criticism / critiques would be allowed to be published by the party.

I read the entire trilogy a couple of years ago and I'll say a couple of things about it: the big ideas are great and the plot is interesting but the characters and the actual mechanics of the writing are solidly mediocre at times. I'm not sure if that's down to the translation between languages (Ken Liu's two translations are much better than the middle book IMO) or just the style of the novels but it's definitely a pain point for the series.

Parts of the later books read like bad western SF from the 60s or 70s and some of the later themes are ridiculously reactionary. Like women being incapable of aggressive choices necessary for survival or the decadent feminized men who are incapable of things in general. There's some large scale human social critique involved later about societal wishful thinking that's 100% on point but I won't spoil that for you.

It's definitely worth reading, pieces of the trilogy are great, but it also goes in decidedly reactionary directions at times as well. It's sort of like reading Ringworld - lots of neat concepts with some chauvinistic social commentary.