s******n
发帖数: 518 | 1 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1319405927
Consider rest of my comments are going to be glowing positive about why this
is my series of the year, I need to start by pointing out that it does have
glaring problems. Liu has thankfully fixed the pacing issues plagued first
two books, and the characterisation, while weaker than average, as a whole
it is within acceptable range. What stood out is that Liu ' s understanding
of gender is not great. While the entire series has the flavour of oddly
specific gender essentialism, the third book got drastically stuffer and
weirder to the point of being comical. Any female characters getting more
than a sentence will be emphasised about her being young and pretty. Do
yourself a favour and just shut down your brain whenever it mentions "
womanly" or "manly", but at large these are not disruptive and no worse than
most other spec fics out there. Not a compliment, just as a genre dude
writing women tend to end up as a mess as a rule.
I'm not sure where I stand with the characters. This book's lead is not
infuriatingly obnoxious like last, instead she is a frustrating character
who took like what, three initiatives in the entire book? In here though it
does work with her character. She is the kind of person who, much to book's
awareness, is only as responsible so much as the crowd decided somehow she
should take responsibility. Even though much of the incidents were only
judged with a retrospectroscope, for anyone who are remotely more aware of
their surroundings Cheng Xin is painfully inept to read. It sort of ties
into my last complaint, what kind of woman (other than ones exist in male
fantasy) wouldn't find being trapped in a universe with a straight man
utterly threatening? Then again the lead character is actually that clueless
. Kindness or weakness are the same thing, and in the scope of TBP they are
neutral and futile anyway.
For 95% of the book I felt that the time line is too pressed, as I'm not
convinced that this much fundemental human society would change, culture
wise, this much in decade bursts. Makes more sense to stretch it out to 800
rather than 400 years, given the way the series worked it wouldn't make rest
of the plot less workable.
I also don't know about the ending, far too optimistic for my liking given
that it essentially implicated a large scale self-induced vulnerability
among civilisations lasted this far by never doing so. But I digress.
This is still one of the best things I've read for a long, long time. The
ambition and scope are huge, and for that I don't want to give away too much
, let's just say every page turn was accompanied by HOLY FUCK on mg behalf.
The setting is grim. Then it gets grimmer. Nothing you do matter much. No
one can afford a moment of contentment or even apathy. Never seen the
expression "kill or be killed" played to this scale.
As the book said. the destruction of the universe cannot be credited to one
person, as it takes the collective effort of every body, dead and alive, to
fuck up this spectacularly.
That much, we can deliver. It isn't just amoral to its barest bones, but
amoral in the chaotically orderly, most neutral, most inevitable way. There
are no good people. Just dead ones. |
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