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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31014 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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I'm recommending people to read the first book, but nothing else. It presents a really interesting and unique setting and through focusing on and exploring that setting it manages to be good. By his second book, the novelty wears off and you begin to see more and more how silly his character writing is, the story writing is mediocre but salvageable, as is the prose.

I liked the second book because of how ridiculously misogynistic it is.

The third book goes so soft sci-fi it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

I think that all the books are worth reading but I agree the series gets worse as it goes on. The first book is amazing, the second book good, and the third book ok at best.

The third book is easily the best of the trilogy. Unless you read books for "the characters" there is no contest.

I think the third book is by far the worst, and I don't read books for characters. It's just... a hot mess without any really interesting ideas.

I had exactly the opposite take — first book okay, second book good, third book excellent.Liu can’t write characters or plausible motives for shit, but his ideas are absolutely wild. Book 1 is mostly badly written characters doing stuff. Book 2 is badly written characters doing stuff with a great reveal at the end. Book 3 is Liu coming up with insane genius explanations for string theory, matter-antimatter asymmetry, entropy, etc..

Admittedly I stopped somewhere towards the end of the second book (I don't even remember whether I finished it, just that I put it aside with the thought "these characters are worse than most YA fiction"). Maybe I should pick up the third book after all?

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