If all science fiction were quantized by quality and graphed on a normal distribution, this book would be at the absolute top of the Gaussian curve -- which is to say it is mid in the most literal sense. Mediocre, but not awful, it's highs are rare and its lows are many, but the landscape it paints is only bumpy at high resolutions -- for the most part, the words evoke the feeling of starting at a flat wall of color.
I will not critique the prose in this series -- it is a translation, and I don't know anything about Chinese literature to know if the style is universally boring of if I am just out of my depth -- but the other elements of story transcend language, and they are severely lacking.
I don't hate these books, there's not enough to hate, and there parts that are genuinely good and compelling and interesting. But they are few and far between, and often end with little fanfare and underwhelming resolution.
The plot of these three novels is like Ender's Game -- War between distant words of very different technologies. I won't get into the details because they are convoluted, long, and ultimately not that important. Which is ironic, as they are what is most emphasized in this story. The characters are weak, underdeveloped, or stereotypes. They have characterization in that each has one or two traits that are evoked to move the plot forward. Outside of those times they fade away to nothing. There are one or two exceptions, but rarely did I ever feel I was reading about real or potentially real people. I saw only vessles for the delivery of ideas and plot.
Ideas and plot are what these books most revel in. However, the 'ideas' it entertains are not applications of cutting edge science or interesting philosophy, but science-sounding gobbledygook that amounts to lazy "magic" in a fantasy setting. What gedankenexperiments the book contains have little to do with real physics. "What if one could unfold a proton into lower dimensions" - a meaningless sentence dreamed up by someone who has only ever engaged with pop-sciences. But large swaths of the plot rely on these ideas. And the book spends so much time talking about them as if they mean anything. It is one thing for a magical technology to be the vessel for storytelling, but this author seems to think storytelling is the vessel for showing off neat magic they thought up after hearing about string theory for the first time.
I have a degree in physics, I teach science, and I have always loved math. This book is everything that annoys me about bad science fiction. It thinks that merely presenting abstract 'ideas' is good writing, that one can substitute solid character writing with pages of plot and exposition, and that by writing with big physics words one is somehow philosophizing about real science.
It's also very misogynist in its treatment of women. Laughably so. A man dreams up a perfect women and she appears to fulfill his fantasy - that's her entire character. Another woman exists as a non-character except the times her 'motherly instincts' move the plot along, always causing her to show 'weakness.' At one point the human races' dark age is defined by its 'femininity.' Such writing would seem to nudge this book further to the left of the bell curve, but such patriarchal assumptions are so entrenched in science fiction that it still sits solidly in the middle.
A forgettable series, not worth your time.
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