3 ms·

Thanks for sharing! Last two years I've been feeling like I'm taking crazy pills with all the hype for the trilogy. I finished the first book with high uncertai

Thanks for sharing! Last two years I've been feeling like I'm taking crazy pills with all the hype for the trilogy. I finished the first book with high uncertainty if I should even open the second one, which I did, only to put it back after 50 pages. It's not necessarily bad (subjective after all) but there's an argument that it lacks many elements to be considered a masterpiece. Even accounting lost-in-translation-ness, you still have a more or less average storytelling structure, with not that much innovative elements. Hype definitely makes an average work turn into something annoying if you happen to disagree with the hive mind. I did like the part about the mass computer and the sequential cycles. The narration of that arc was super enjoyable.

jstrieb 4y ago
I felt like you do until about two thirds of the way through the second book, which is where things really pick up. These books have since become some of my favorites. I understand where you're coming from, but I encourage you to try and power through to the end of the second book. The things you complain about are long gone by then, and you might change your mind like I did!
- sebastialonso 4y ago
  Thanks for the advice. Will add Dark Forest to my queue.
- ribit 4y ago
  Second book was a struggle for me. The wallfacer stuff was fairly boring to me and the extremely misogynistic way to long passages of „Luo Ji the incel meets young Werther“ we’re just infuriating. I has to literally skip pages there. Then there were admittedly some unexpected plot twists followed by a very banal climax aka. Dark Forest which was telegraphed from the start, with only real mystery being how nobody in 200 years didn’t reach this extremely obvious conclusion.