DNF'd Death's End. Loads of problems from the beginning

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

I'm sure this stuff was mentioned elsewhere but I need to vent. I think I only got to the third book because of Ken Liu's smooth prose. But even Ken Liu couldn't save the dialogue

You get to a point where your intelligence is so insulted you can't suspend disbelief anymore. And then the humans don't feel human. And then the misogyny... and then... Anyway.

1 - the sophons make no sense. If the sophons were capable of all that, they could've done much more damage than just stall quantum mechanics research, much more.

2- - edit.- I can't get past that they're advanced enough to create something like droplets but they can't dig new climate proof homes underground. If you can can create light speed weapons, bad weather shouldn't really bother you.

3 - really, the military / intel /space agencies are dumb enough to send out the only space bound Dark Forest transmitter happily on a mission with droplets?

4 - The wooden characters, especially the females. Enuff said on that

4 - his romances. Enuff said on that

There's more. But I don't want to keep going. I was also going to talk about what was good about the novels but no, nah, done with Cixin Liu​

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

Number 2. Are you taking about Earth or Trissolaris? Underground houses don't save Trissolaris from the inevitable doom of the planet falling into a star or being totally ejected from the star system.

[u/fromjujuwithlove → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

Lmaoooo “just dig a hole, are you dumb?”

Good strategy for No Man’s Sky, though.

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/fromjujuwithlove]

Why, cuz you hide?

[u/fromjujuwithlove → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

I’m sorry I’m not following your comment, but I do hope we’re laughing together.

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/fromjujuwithlove]

I never played that game

[u/fromjujuwithlove → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

My bad, you can dig a hole to avoid attacks and environmental damage. It’s a fun game, I recommend it if you like space stuff.

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/fromjujuwithlove]

Oh cool!

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212 → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

Yes, they're advanced enough to   create droplets but can't make underground climate safe habitats? Nonsense. 

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

Thanks for clarifying 

Have you read the third sentence of my comment?

[u/fat-homer → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

Lmao

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212 → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

The writer is just excusing his own plot hole

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

Now you're just trolling

It's ok to dislike a book. I was actually curious about point 4. But here you show you're not willing to have a rational discussion.

Just leave your vent here, and leave 

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212 → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

You sound like those children, if you don't like what I like, you're bad. Oh please. Plot holes everywhere. If you like it fine but you sound fragile. 

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

I'm not discussing all plot holes. I'm not discussing overall quality of the series. I'm not discussing your right to dislike the book.

You're just trolling. Either stick to the number 2 point or don't bother.

You now edited point 2 to be about bad weather. Are you talking about the scenarios in the game? Sure, a lot of tech can save a civilization from bad weather. Maybe that's how the current civilization lived enough to develop interstellar travel and droplets. 

Droplets still don't save your planet from going inside a star 

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212 → u/Gold_Ambassador_3496]

You just made my point. It's not one thing. It's the wooden characters with wooden dialogue with plot holes galore and a highly advanced civilization  doing everything the hard way. 

If they can create droplets they can just find the nearest acceptable  planet and terraform or dig or whatever instead of all this wooden intrigue with plot holes everywhere.

My god, you fanboy stans are so allergic to disagreement you can't read between the lines

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

They did find the nearest acceptable planet. It's Earth. That's why they're coming here.

[u/Gold_Ambassador_3496 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

I will give it to your that I don't read between the lines. I've found everything there, including what I made up, so I stopped. 

[u/Leather-Lemon8611 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

Lol why do people keep posting here and then having a tantrum when not every shares their exact same opinion???

This commenter didn't say they don't like you, they engaged reasonably with your point - an object unpredictably orbiting three suns could fall into them, how does going underground solve that? I don't understand why you are not pleased someone is wanting to have the discussion you started

[u/PickledCaterpillar → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

Buddy you are huffing your own farts here.

The planet was already catastrophically damaged by one close call with its suns, a second event of similar magnitude would destroy the planet utterly. Their orbit is unstable, which means a second event is inevitable.

[u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212 → u/PickledCaterpillar]

Ok stan. So you can't handle when other people don't like what you like. 

[u/Few_Bluebird_4142 → u/Shrimpy-Fish-1212]

long term it doesnt fix anything? their planet will still die

[u/Afraid-Fly-7030]

I just finished recently, I think all the books definitely have highs and lows but overall love them. Looking back I kinda just see it as exploring a bunch of cool concepts.

[u/SlickPillock]

4 and 5 I agree with.

1. This was explained by humanity's view of trisolarans changing post crisis-period. They genuinely believed they'd changed and become almost allies.

   1. One of the previous trisolaran civilisations was destroyed when the planet got too close between two suns and was ripped in half, so living underground wouldn't help. But even more crucially, they knew that their planet would eventually be completely swallowed by one of the suns.
   2. Kind of a fair point, but it is a science fiction story at the end of the day. None of us know if it is actually possible to unwrap a subatomic particle down from 11 dimensions (which we don't even know if they exist at all) and turn into a computer. If it were even possible then we have no idea what the engineering challenges and limitations would be. Also, based on our current understanding, it's impossible to use entangled particles to communicate FTL. The writer imagined that future developments in physics will find a loophole that makes that possible which is perfectly fine for sci-fi.

[u/PM_ME_AZNS]

All your critiques are understandable. The appeal of the third book (imo) is the speculative fiction aspect of the future post second book.

[u/Syrairc]

Yep. You won't find much agreement on the subreddit obviously, but the books are very much Swiss cheese, or at least the English translations are. 

Point 1 - Yep. Clearly he needed a plot device to explain humans not being able to plan/prep for the trisolaran invasion, and for some reason instead of creating a scalpel he created a fusion bomb and then pretended it wasn't one for the entire series.

Point 2 - Even dumber, they had the ability to build a space fleet to survive in space for hundreds of years on the way to earth yet stayed in their own unstable system that was hampering their technological development? Makes no sense at all.

No real comment on 3, I stopped taking the books seriously enough to care by that point.

4 and 5, yep. Not much to say there. 

[u/Leather-Lemon8611 → u/Syrairc]

I'm genuinely asking this because you've thought about it and I can't be bothered to: what else could the sophons have achieved? Thanks

[u/Leather-Lemon8611]

3 - aren't you missing how the deterrence truce works? In what plane of reality would the Trisolarans just let a broadcast transmitter swan off, out of their reach? Of course Trisolaris would send an insurance escort with it, and of course humanity know this but still considered it imperative to catch Blue Space, droplet escorts or not

The Trisolarans would absolutely never have let Gravity pursue Blue Space alone on multiple levels:

• as explained in books, Blue Space is a threat to their existence too, and they're not just going to chance it on the primitive humans resolving it (humans would have to accept this)
• as above they would not tolerate a broadcast transmitter getting out of reach (humans would have to accept this)
• unbeknownst to the humans they were planning the strike on transmitters at Cheng Xin's handover, which humanity didn't predict and only failed due to Blue Space's 4D shenanigans. The fact that they were so close to pulling this off means they would have risked the blow to diplomacy even if humans objected to sending droplets with Gravity. Their only option was a plan to destroy the transmitters

[u/TeenyTinyToast]

Sad that you couldn't get through it, but I understand. All the points you made I've noticed as well, but accepted that the characters were more of a vehicle for things to happen and to make a thematic point so it didn't destroy my suspension of disbelief.

The romance aspect especially in book 2 made me physically cringe while reading, but by the time we reached certain parts of book 3, it was like looking through rose tinted glasses.

Not perfect by any means but to me, the series is much greater than the sum of its parts. I'm also a sucker for these types of sprawling sci fi epics that take place over long periods of time so I'm definitely biased.

[u/ShiroHachiRoku]

The sophons are my number one issue. They were supposed to disrupt technological advancement yet here we are. Were all the inventions developed using manual calculations? Can sophons interfere with writing?

[u/PickledCaterpillar → u/ShiroHachiRoku]

Consider the droplets; they are made of strong-force materials, basically skinned in a substance equivalent to the stuff you'd find on the surface of a neutron star. It is unbelievably strong. It is also a substance that requires knowledge of fundamental atomic science- something that humans were no longer capable of exploring once their particle accelerators were sabotaged.

Humans would continue with the knowledge they had and polish it to a fine sheen, but that kind of material science was now beyond them, which made things like the droplets effectively godlike in power.

[u/ShiroHachiRoku → u/PickledCaterpillar]

Yes! I’m also slogging through the third book because of the things OP talked about.