A complex story that relies on science and world building, The Three-Body Problem is easily the most captivating SciFi novel I've read in a long time. If the reader is willing to allow that many things in the book will not be clear until the very end, then this book will captivate easily. It is not only an excellent work of SciFi (heavy on the Sci) but also an interesting look at China both currently and historically. I felt very much like I was back in China while reading a lot of this. It's something cultural that is difficult to put into words. The characters may appear flat at first but in reality they have rich complexity. In a western novel these characters would behave differently, would play different roles. But in the context of China the behavior is not only perfectly understandable but so realistic as to paint vivid pictures of each person in my brain.

Liu CiXin does not assume that the reader is as familiar with many of the theoretical scientific ideas as he is, making most of the science easy enough for even a humanities major like myself to understand. There are ideas in this book that are extraordinarily complex, things that I struggle even now to wrap my brain around, but this does not diminish the novel nor does it make the reader feel inferior for not understanding. The lack of understand is, indeed, at the very heart of what this novel is about.

It's been a long times since I've felt as strongly about a book as I do about this one. The one thing that scares me is that I do not know that I want a sequel, although I know one already exists. I'm sure a sequel would be very good, but this story is so whole and completely already, I fear that the sequel will not live up to my now very high expectations for Liu's work.

The thing is... I'm not sure if I loved
This or hated it. It's evil Tony Stark which, as an Iron Man fan is hard to read. But it's believable. It's absolutely the kind of story you would tell if you were going to make Tony the bad guy. I just don't know if it is sustainable? How many issues of this can they produce before it gets annoying or before someone kills Stark? Guess we will see...

There is an awful lot to like about this comic. I enjoy the sex positive story telling, the lack of slut shaming, the candor and humor with which the subject is broached. I like the characters, I like the art, I like the way that sex is treated in the book. But I have... world building worries. So far we have seen glimpses of what "The Quiet" has in store for our heroes but we know very little. Maybe we will learn more but at the moment the world building is lacking. I will continue to read but I was not as thrilled about this comic as I hoped I would be. Here's hoping the story gets better with Vol 2!