The first book in the series, The Three-Body Problem, is one of the most popular books in Chinese according to wikipedia. The Three-Body Problem was the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for best novel. I read it at the end of last year and waited a few months for the next two to become available. I was able to listen to books 2 and 3 back-to-back which was really nice.
So this trilogy is science fiction, but what I would consider hard-SF. That’s not to say that I coined the term, just that the specific definition of that genre can be fluid and the categorization is mine. I call it hard-SF as it is based on very real science. Each book in this series focuses on a specific problem from various scientific fields. The first book focusses on the three-body problem of orbital mechanics, hence the name. The second addresses the Fermi paradox which is the contradiction, seemingly, of the infinite nature of the universe and the supposed, lack of other intelligent life. The Dark Forest explains the paradox in a way that makes sense and is based on legitimate scientific theory. The third book is about life as we know it and that description hardly does it justice.
The Dark Forest, like its predecessor, took a little bit to get into but ended spectacularly. Death’s End had no break in period. It was interesting and exciting from the get-go. I listened to the books and so I did find the Chinese names of the characters hard to follow, at least at first. I feel guilty about that and it always makes me think of a tweet I saw years ago by someone commenting that white people have no problem pronouncing Danaerys Targaryen yet we struggle with any real, non-white names. I think the reason, at least for me, is just lack of familiarity which is a big part of the reason that I started the series in the first place. In pushing myself to try something new, I found a series that I loved. Pretty big win-win there.
