roz1ta's reviews
98 reviews

The strangely domestic angle this book took was baffling in a way I don't think was self aware or an artistic choice. Some of the minuate, of which there is more than made sense to me, could have existed in another context, too much of it felt divorced from the memory police. Even the theme of memory barely felt like a factor. A small scope could have worked if the atmosphere felt heavier, or if the book developed atmosphere at all.

Characters' thoughts and conversations were noticeably cyclical and slightly heavy handed or a deadend. Things are stated or revealed early, severing the chance of a slow discovery and immersion, and then never expanded beyond how they're rendered in those first conversations or observations.

The author seems almost to point to threads and concepts that would be more interesting to explore and then retreats back into its domestic frame after the barest attention is paid to it.
So many head turning concepts fade away (and not in a meta way), to be replaced by discussions of vegetables, neighbours, a rescue dog and one-off interactions or repeated, unyielding talking points. A glass paperweight and a child's fingernails are given more attention than the protagonist waltzing into a Memory Police Headquarter, which apparently arouses as little suspicion as possible and never bears the fruit of further action or the acquisition of new information.
Instead, we sit in boats that aren't boats asking old men the same questions, or opening trapdoors and delivering dinner or cutlery and marveling at the smallness of rooms.

The character of R was perhaps the only person I was truly compelled by. I cannot help thinking, if the author was unwilling to expand upon anything after it's been mentioned a singular time, he might as well have been the main character. 
Harbouring memories is a burden that is barely explored, we only see his mild frustration at those around him not doing so, and even those instances are brief. He spends his time in the book being nice and tries to stoke their memories; he's not angry or even fearful that he remembers, and instead treats it as a precious resource and skill to be passed on, but even this isn't given much time.
And the expansiveness of his mind, restricted to his confined surroundings, is not given much grace at all. So many questions could have been asked and explored, about where a person begins and ends in circumstances where he is holding on to his inner world at the expense of his material one. 
He is called to mind to give the readers a jolt of fear at him being discovered. Do the Memory Police kill? At what point is so much blatant memorisation means forgoing experimentation and cutting to the chase, or is there something worse? What are the Memory Police's facilities like? This danger feels more mythological than anything because, in the end, no external complications and no internal exploration of anything really occurs. 
An old man so clearly fated to die does so, to not even that much fallout, despite the focus put on him. 
There is one parallel, something with honest to god thematic relevance (difficult to say since this book seems to forget its themes, again not even in a meta way) that can't be enjoyed for long because it's at the end of the book, and is surrounded by such an obvious lack of attention to its themes, in the end it is simply a remainder, an easteregg.

This was a novel crying out to be intricately written - the writing had its moments, there was a few water metaphors which I thought would become a motif but didn't - and surreal and trippy - in the book's dying breaths, there is body horror that felt like finally grasping a thread of something of thematic relevance - but in the end it feels like a promise of something vividly rendered - which even with its small scope it doesn't manage to achieve at all - and philosophically ambitious that in the end, feels like even the protagonist’s memories, and the reader’s, have been left largely untouched and unreckoned with.

I found this book difficult to immerse myself in. I felt there was a lot of extraneous detail and somehow, simultaneously, too little exploration of anything interesting.
The future didn't feel as vivid as I would have liked (I enjoyed the allusions to class warfare, but that was all they were) time, as a concept, felt barely explored, and the protagonist had essentially no characterisation.
There was a part, near the end, where the writing finally struck me because we were looking at something strange and wondering about something interesting, but that was (literally) a blip in time.
Whilst revolutionary, by today's standards, this barely even felt ambitious.

The characters kept randomly masturbating

I understand why this book has left the mark it has. The first part feels important, weighted, dense with worldbuilding and atmosphere. I was sufficiently disturbed and immersed in the feeling of being watched, of words and expression being measured and cut. His work, his neighbors, small details complied to give a true sense of wrongness.
The second part of the book feels largely extraneous. A romance, whilst maybe would have been remiss to not explore in this context, was not needed and I didn't care for it. A character like Winston, who's more a representation of being the one or few people who suspect things are wrong - meaning he is therefore basically not a character at all, is not someone for whom it is advantageous to explore a romance with. This part largely felt like an interlude.
After all this, the third part of the book is mixed. The interrogation was spotty, not as disturbing in practice as the notion of it had been. I found certain parts (the rat, the wishing punishment on his girlfriend) a little heavy handed. There were a few moments of dread, but more at the implications of what was happening than what was actually happening. Details I thought would end up being important or affective - a war with EastAsia/Eurasia - didn't seem to culminate in anything. The ending was not as drastic as I felt the book was building up to, but I can appreciate the strange, sickening anti-climax.
Overall, having in my eyes lost its effectiveness over time, I feel the book accomplished what it needed to in its first half, and if it were a novella or a long short story, would have more closely matched up to its legacy.

The last 150 pages or so of this book I found to be a slog in a way I felt the rest of the book wasn't - pretty much entirely due to the scientific explanations that felt indulgent and didn't help further my understanding.

I found this book baffling and a bit strange to be in at times.
The secretive military operations and facilities were my favourite aspect, and gave a tangible representation of how important the work they were doing was. The cumulative effect of the mystery of the numbers appearing in the protagonist’s vision, the suicides, the other protagonist’s past, and Shi Qiang, was deeply fascinating.
The past and present switching gave the book, world, characters implications - its best trait.
The characters are strange as they just feel like people, but not overly realistic, and a bit samey due to the intertwined roles they play. I was fond of them despite this. The grandiose everything else of the book is made better by the modest characters.
The Three Body Problem game itself was very disorientating to be in, and I found those sections to be a bit extraneous, but once they were recontextualised by the ending, I was thankful for both the fact that it had served its function and the fact it was done.

It is promising, and a great set up for what I anticipate to be an excellent series. The ending was potent and imbued in me the hype I'd felt intermittently throughout the book, after that strange, out of character stretch of being less riveted - but I feel a lot of that is my fault and not the story’s. This book feels like reading an important government document that, when the effects of it accumulate, will be life changing.