I had heard of this book somewhere and decided to try it as an ebook from Google. It has been on my phone for ages, but I only just finished. I thought I had some way to go, but there are a lot of pages at the end with a preview of the next in the series. I did not realise it was a series to start with.
From the Google Play store.
Author Liu Cixin is Chinese and this is probably the first novel I have read by a Chinese author. It has won some awards and it does have some interesting ideas. It starts off during the Cultural Revolution and portrays that as being an unpleasant time with intellectuals being strictly controlled and even killed if they deviated from party dogma. A secret project involves interstellar communications.
There is some science in this book, but it may be stretched to fit the needs of the plot. There is also a computer game that involves the titular problem that relates to chaotic behaviour.
I will not spoil the plot, but you can real more on Wikipedia if you like.
I was interested to see where it went, but the characters did not engage me too much. Maybe it is the translation, but I found the style unusual and a bit stilted. It is well into the book before you find out what is going on, but then it is setting things up for the rest of the trilogy. I am not especially excited about reading the rest and I have other books to read. I think we should check out literature from other cultures, but it may be hard work.
Apparently a movie has been made of the book, but it has not been released yet. There is a movie of his other story The Wandering Earth on Netflix that I have yet to watch.
I can see a couple of people I know read it via Goodreads. They seemed to like it. It scores over 4/5 there, but I would rate is a 3/5 personally.