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My feelings about the series are mixed: I liked the way science concepts are introduced. The story in the first book starts from 1960s and with each time-jump, new technologies are introduced. The new science/technologies seem consistent, well-explained, believable, and build upon the previously introduced ones. The scenes in Gravity and Blue Space feel genuinely mystifying and extremely well-thought of. I also liked the fairy tales and guessing at deciphering the message.
Since this is a translation, I didn't expect natural or powerful prose. But even with this low expectation, the story feels like reading summary of the story. I also didn't like the main characters with the exception of Luo Ji and Da Shi. The main character of this book makes weird decisions that made her hard to root for. The overall tone of the narration seemed to glorify authoritarianism, sexism ( males are all for conviction and discoveries, females apply brakes on the progress by favoring love ), and herd mentality (population is neatly divided into groups whose members all think alike).
Loved the way the story unfolds until the end of the universe.
This is the first horror book I've read, so I started with zero expectations. The writing grew on me quickly: Our teenager hero Frank lives in a Scottish countryside on a small island with his Father. He is a ruthless, troubled kid, but with a weird air of playful innocence around him. I also loved the dark humor that goes along with the deceptions of violence and ‘eccentricities'. I am looking forward to read more such books!
Much better than the first part in terms of the quality of translation. With multiple similar sounding names and people having multiple names (a cultural thing), it's bit hard to immerse in the story. There were also some (IMO) stupid and frenzied decisions by SJF that I didn't find plausible. Still, a very realistic sci-fi!
