SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

What are your final thoughts? Did you love it or hate it? I found it tough going in some parts but appreciated the differences from a lot of other sci-fi I've read and will be interested to continue the series when the next book is translated.

I thought it started really well and i was enjoying a book written from a cultural perspective i know little about. I thought it lost its way in the middle but was lifted at the end by some neat ideas regards the sophons. I think it's set up nicely for the next in the series. I felt that the plot jumped a bit jarringly a couple of times, like when the aliens' existence was confirmed. I thought that was a bit sudden. I liked the idea of a war fought by derailing science rather than by using gun ships. That was clever. I shall read the next one.

Ps This is the first book from the group i've read. Have been lurking for a while but finally got around to it.

Liked, not loved.

The video game sequences, I think, were very underwhelming. I'm not sure in the end they really served any point. I've been heavily involved in gaming during parts of my life and many of my closest friends are totally in that world (one used to work in the video game industry), and none of those "game" sequences rang true.

First of all it wasn't a game, but more of a Virtual World like Second Life. We don't really see anyone actually "playing" the game, but rather just wandering around observing things. Even though the main character is proclaimed one of the best players ever...what did he do in the game other than watch other people try things? Yeah, he solved the first level of the game, but how hard was that--the answer was in the title of the game. So, big whoop.

That sounds like I disliked it. I didn't overall. But it has a fair amount of weak points, not the least of which was its uneven narrative and weak characterization. It felt like a story that should have been more poetic than it was. I'm uncertain if this was just how the book was written, or in some part a byproduct of translation. Whatever the reason, I felt it didn't quite live up to its potential.

All that said, and considering the science and Cultural Revolution stuff that I did like, I'd still give it a 4-star rating. But I don't think I'll actively seek out the rest of the series.

I liked the dystopian feel from the cultural revolution, and especially with Ye and her father. It had a real solid feel to it and jived with what I have read about the cultural revolution. I also liked the whole idea of the three-body problem; definitely a great premise for a book.

But I also agree with those who felt the plot was jarring and the characters a bit flat. There were some powerful ideas that were introduced, but perhaps not developed and merged and smoothed as well as they could have been.

Still, the book kept me interested and reading to the end, an enjoyable story.

It has an interesting concept and some ideas but it was not an entertaining read. It felt like a chore. Still, I do not regret reading it since my curiosity is sated.

For me the best part of the book is the beginning, where we get a glimpse of the cultural revolution and its idealistic excesses. We are introduced to a young girl, 15 years of age at most, whose idealistic fervor is portrayed in the following wonderfully written passage:

“The new girl . . . waved the battle banner as though brandishing her burning youth, trusting that the enemy would be burnt to ashes in the revolutionary flames, imagining that an ideal world would be born tomorrow from the ardor and zeal coursing through her blood.… She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest.”

Then we move forward in time to an auditorium filled with impassioned cultural idealists where revolutionaries are “prosecuting” a physics professor for teaching reactionary, anti-dialectical theories such as Relativity and Quantum Theory. When the professor refuses to repent his politically incorrect western notions of the universe, three young girls of Junior High age — the same age as the young martyr and experiencing the same ideological fervor — beat the professor to death. The crowd roars its approval, except for one woman, a physics graduate student, who is the professor’s daughter and our young martyr’s older sister.

Later, a political officer explains to Wenjie, the professor’s older daughter, that, while her transgression is minor, she should expect severe punishment from a country caught in the throes of radical, uncompromising ideology because "treating you too severely would just be a mistake in method, but treating you too laxly would be a mistake in political direction."

That's a great quote and should be memorized. This passage demonstrates how out of control, idealistic fervor can rip family and community apart and throw an entire country into a dark age, whose greatest achievement is ignorance masquerading as purity of thought brought on by imprisoning politically incorrect ideas in a cloak of fear and retribution.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the online game chapters. At the heart of the gam lies a science conundrum that players attempt to solve but may be unsolvable, and segues nicely into the larger story. The game, chock-filled with Eastern and Western historical figures, gives the author an opportunity to demonstrate his knowledge and humor. When Wang comes across Newton and Leibniz dueling with swords over a science dispute — not too far from the truth — I laughed and laughed and laughed. Good job.

But the book is also a good, if problematic, science fiction story and wonderful mystery. The science fiction is problematic for two reasons: first, the theory of evolution is stretched beyond the breaking point. Every so often a chaotic period destroys everything, yet the Solarians keep coming back. A species does not keep going extinct and recreating itself.

The second problem is a product of the first: science and technology do not advance without continuity. Every idea, every advance, is built upon every idea and advance that came before it. Yet here we have a technologically advanced civilization whose whole existence is predicated on discontinuity.

The other thing I didn't like is the author doesn’t know how to solve the mystery using his characters, so he resorts to a massive info dump by inserting an unnamed narrator at the end to explain it all. This uninterrupted info dump consumes about 10% of the book, and the story fails to move forward and the characters cease to exist while we receive the download. But I am willing to accept an unlikely premise or two in return for a good story.

One more slight complaint. The author should stay away from technology-based metaphors and similes.

Examples:

Speaking of the cultural revolution:

"Battles like this raged across Beijing like a multitude of CPUs working in parallel.”

Whew!

The emotionally devastated Wenjie, the physics professor’s eldest daughter:

"She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero.”

Ugh!!

And my all time unfavorite:

"Wang subconsciously thought of her as the long obsolete DOS operating system: a blank screen, a bare “C\:” prompt, a blinking cursor."


Stop, please!

Overall a good read, but one with flaws in technique and science.

Micah wrote, "The video game sequences, I think, were very underwhelming. I'm not sure in the end they really served any point.

I realize he was trying to make a point with the three-body problem, but there might have been a better way to do that.

It's funny, because I found the beginning slow. Everyone's different though.

I'm looking forward to the next one.

This was one of the most enjoyable books, for different reasons that fit together: ultimately a reflection on society.

Western influence (and there is much):
Silent Springby Rachel Carson. This is the book that coalesces Ye Wenjie's experiences with her resultant outlook on humanity. Before reading it she experienced true horrors and after reading it her view of humanity led to what, if it really happened, could cast her as the worst traitor/terrorist.

Good books bring up questions outside the front and back flaps:

- How is Silent Spring viewed today in China? Is it widely read? There are huge environmental problems, i.e., breathable air. What influence does it have, either outright or behind closed doors?

- A Study in Scarlet. This is more for fun but suffice to say Sherlock Holmes in some circles must be as globally well known as any fictional character. (Holmes was more prominently an influence in The Quantum Thief, but it's interesting that he shows up so often.) Here he is used to describe the math prodigy's innate understanding of complex math, any math. Since this is a popular book in China the author I would imagine picks relatable comparisons.

Different Perspectives: Views on ET contact:
The west view CETI as a positive but in the hypothetical report here, it is entirely negative:

- The 'American Imperialists' and 'Russian Revisionists' would dominate the message, and would not share in any benefits, and no good would come of it. They would also dominate and drive the message and ETs get one version of human life.

If you asked the 'powers' their opinion on that, I'm sure they would talk about equity. But in reality? Hmm.

The Trisolarins:
- This was really interesting and I loved the satire: dehydrating in bad times; rehydrating in good times; rolling them up like parchment scrolls whey they are dehydrated and storing them, or burning them like chaff if called for.

- The pompous absurdity of the Trisolarin leader talking about this to the one who sent the message "Do Not Respond" was really rich. But it mirrored in extremely exaggerated style the actions of some governments and the way they treat their people.

Religious factions:
- It isn't long before the ETO splits into 2 factions, the Redemptionists and the Adventists, and sure enough it results in murder. Messages and interpretations are skewed and each side has its own agenda. Very familiar. It was surprising to see Ye Wenjie as their main leader because she is so apolitical but yes, it made sense.

The characters:
- Ye Wenjie was totally believable as an individual who had watched her father beaten to death because he would not deny science and his beliefs and instead spew nonsense. His associate killed herself shortly afterward and Wenjie found her.

- Da Shi, the policeman was good and funny but he was also a bit obvious as standing for the 'wisdom of the common simple man'. Some of that is okay but it's better if not so obvious.

- The character portrayal that really pushed it was the meeting over what to do about 'Judgment Day'. Too Steven Segal. But after that came the Trisolarin and Phoson chapters and swung it back up and in retrospect it fit into the pop culture aspect of the whole collage.

Total fun.
Gain reflectivity::: "Right then...the sun was the brightest star in the entire Milky Way."

Of course I'll read the next one!

Well said Flash!

I thought that this was an interesting book, I liked how it started out against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution. I thought that it set up Ye Wenjie as a interesting character and a lot of her choices made sense considering what she had been through.

I liked the book, at times I thought that it got a little too technical for me, but I enjoyed it and I would read the next one.

Rob wrote: "Well said Flash!"

Thanks!

awesome book - really happy this one got the vote!

Only down side was finishing all excited for the sequel to find it not yet available...

It was a like not love read for me too. I really enjoyed the beginning but I also felt like it went off the rails a bit and the gaming part really didn't work me. However I did like the overall story and I will read the next one.

That's about all an author can ask for, right? I liked the book a lot and am anxiously looking forward to the next one (The Dark Forest is out on August 11).

I am not a video gamer so I think I missed a lot of the points in those sequences (although I too was amused by the battle between Newton and Leibniz).

The sophons were a high point for me. But they are so powerful I am really curious as to how the humans will have any chance at all against the Trisolarians as the story unfolds.

Of the five Best Novel nominees this is the one I want most to win.

Rob wrote: "It's funny, because I found the beginning slow. Everyone's different though."

Me too Rob - it didn't really pick up for me until Ye Wenje's backstory was flushed out starting in chapter 26. After that, I was fully engaged. I think she was the most fully realized as a character. It was her story that really held my interest, from what she suffered in the Cultural revolution going forward and how it affected her.

I did find the Trisolaran society fascinating as well Flash Beagle, but that was mostly in the final 1/3 of the book too other than the few details that can be gleaned from the "game".

I have to wonder if The Three-body Problem would've been nominated for a Hugo if it had been written by a woman.

Likely not, but my machinations went further. I took all of the weak or traitorous roles, and the brainwashed waifs, and gender swapped them. Next I exchanged all of the 'every man' and 'man of honor' characters for smart, independent women. What I ended up with after my mental gymnastics were done was a book that we wouldn't be discussing. It never would have sold enough copies to reach the English speaking markets.

Needless to say, I mostly hated this book. It got the usual two and a half stars that mean I didn't toss it over my shoulder and move on to something better.

Here is my review of Three body problem.

Flash Beagle wrote: "The characters:
- Ye Wenjie was totally believable as an individual who had watched her father beaten to death because he would not deny science and his beliefs and instead spew nonsense. His associate killed herself shortly afterward and Wenjie found her.

- Da Shi, the policeman was good and funny but he was also a bit obvious as standing for the 'wisdom of the common simple man'. Some of that is okay but it's better if not so obvious."

These were basically the only 2 characters I found likable, the main character was not a character more a window into the world. Everyone else's motivations seemingly made no sense, and the sheer unbelievable arrogance in their own brilliance and their hatred of humanity many of the scientists had made me hate basically all of them with a burning passion.

Also I actually know how computers work. So that entire long segment with them implementing flip-flops with the huge army just made me cringe over and over again. Plus the book seemed to suffer at many moments of how come these people are apparently so brilliant but I the reader am still figuring everything out wayyyyy ahead of them.

For a number of reasons, this book never really engaged me. Perhaps something was lost in translation, or perhaps the cultural gap was just too wide a leap for me, but this book fell flat on several levels.

First, the characters never seemed real and were hard to keep track of, probably because I just didn’t seem to care much about them. And the dialogue I thought was atrocious, like a badly dubbed kung-fu movie.

There were some clever ideas, but their presentation seemed disjointed and choppy, and the science behind them was filled with inconsistencies and non sequiturs. Finally, the cultural and political commentary came across as heavy handed, as if the author was trying a little too hard to make a statement.

So in the end I rate this book 2-1/2 stars, which I will generously round up to 3, and have no desire to read any other books in the series.

I read this as part of my effort to read the Hugo nominees, and wrote a review about it. After reading a couple more candidates and having had time to think about it, I like this book even less than I did when I wrote the review.

The problem of this book is the science. The writing's a bit halting at times, and particularly towards the end it's endless expository dialogue purely for the benefit of the reader, but I might be able to live with those - I kind of did during the first half or so of the book.

But as Aaron above pointed out, knowing how the computers work makes the 30-million flag-waving army computer a ridiculous read - particularly with its talk about plugin architecture, operating systems, and progress bar, of all things.

And while I could live with the evolutionary problems mentioned above, or the idea of dehydration as means for survival, when the book started to describe the sophons, my suspension of disbelief just couldn't take it. Being able to unfold upper dimensions into lower ones is a nice idea; making "off by one" mistakes, etching circuits with space ships, having matter from a single proton enclosing a whole planet.. That's just too far from believable. If Trisolarans are capable of building just about omnipotent supercomputers the size of a proton, you'd think they have solved such a mundane problem as having three suns. But apparently not.

I've seen this book often mentioned as being hard science fiction. In the sense of having lots of sciency talk and technobabble, it fits the bill. However, my idea of hard sf also requires it to be at least moderately anchored to reality and believable, and I don't think Three-Body Problem's science is either.

It was the fiction of this book that I really liked - the "science" = meh. More like, whatever. To be fair I never read a SF book to get a lesson in plausible science, but that’s just me.

The reading experience I enjoyed a great deal, it is a rare thing to feel and experience some genuine difference in writing which this book offered me in bucket loads. Its foreignness, its Chinese-ness I guess, was intriguing. Huge kudos to the translator.

For me, the science may well be like magic and its specifics may be omitted altogether - in fact, that's of then the case. However, here the science plays a major role and it seems that there's an effort made to make it sound plausible. It just fails spectacularly.

I agree that the writing is different from what I've read recently, and it was sort of refreshing - particularly the fact that the backdrop of the story was different with its Culture Revolution scenes and the Western culture being an (unwanted?) influence instead of mainstream.

On the other hand, being different doesn't necessarily mean it's good. It also left me pondering the way we read and measure books: the book has received a lot of press and comments regarding the fact that it's Chinese (and apparently a best-seller). Sure, but is it any good? I haven't read Chinese literature, much less Chinese science fiction, so I have no idea whether the features I find intriguing come from the ingenuity of the author or the fact that I just don't recognize even the mundane features of Chinese literature.

Now see, I really enjoyed this book and each time I put it down I anticipated the moment I could pick it back up again. It may not have been as universally imaginative as some sci-fi's I've read but I loved how technical the science was. But again, there's the difference in personal enjoyment. I love reading books that flesh out theoretical science. I'm a big freaking nerd in that respect. My household has been putting up with me describing concepts found in this novel over the past little while and even engaged in some conversation regarding them. Another thing that bumped up my enjoyment of this novel.

Even the gaming parts of the novel were interesting. I do some online gaming and the Three Body world was very different but you understood why when it was revealed that you were observing another culture's possible history.

And yes, this book reads quite different because it was translated from Chinese but I liked that about it. The cultural differences attracted me too. I love looking into different cultures and how their world view is effected by events in their own pasts. I will certainly read the next book when it is translated.

I think maybe I had some wrong assumptions about SF since some SF books like this or two of Ender Quintet book where science is more like magic than science. Even if admit I have read before of the real science that is used in the book.

I read this book before its Hugo nomination since it was praised by some blogs I follow and I am more disappointed and had a hard time believing most of the plot.

I liked the beginning, with the revolution. As a video gamer, I was totally clueless to the interest of the game since it was a video game that wasn't attractive to most of the video gamers (no real liberty, no lot of options, not fun, not pretty, most of the time the game seems to be just observing, listening).

How come Ye is surprised at the end that the alien want to kill the humans ?

While I thought the story overall was clever and fairly interesting, I would have to seriously be lacking in books to read before I continued this series. I just felt like there was a good 100 - 150 pages in the middle of this novel that really didn't progress the story very much and were hard to get through (mostly centered around the computer game sequences). The fact the novel doesn't stand on its own but only as a setup for the rest of the trilogy bugs me more than anything.
Furthermore, I'll agree with one of the other comments that the dialogue did often remind me of a poorly dubbed Jackie Chan movie and as the "First Thoughts" thread covered pretty well, the characters were flat other than Wang and Shi.

It seemed such a hopeless, nihilistic story with no room for human hope - at least as it had so far been told.

It won the Hugo - YAY!!!!!!

I just finished and was disappointed. To summarize previous comments that I agree with: characterization was 'flat', the presentation seemed disjointed and choppy, and the science behind them was filled with inconsistencies. It also got a bit 'preachy'. It does give insight into Chinese culture and history, but yes, does it make it a good book? It seems like it won the Hugo just because nobody wanted to vote for the so-called 'Social Justice Warrior' nominated books, which, looking at plot and characterization and presentation and world-building etc was just so much better. In my eyes the Puppies won this round.

I agree with the comments about the science. I don't mind when some authors use tech as a convenience in storytelling. However, when that's what they are doing, they had better not go into the details. If there are long discussions of science, I shouldn't smell BS.

The book was OK for me, not great. I will probably continue the series, but it's not a priority.

Moving this up for the upcoming buddy read starting April 15! Tell us your thoughts!

I just finished chapter 8 (view spoiler)[ when Wang Miao goes to visit Yang Dong’s mother who is oh-so-coincidentally Ye Wenjie (hide spoiler)]

First a general comment about the flatness of the prose, which people in the initial reactions thread commented on... I’ve noticed this in the (albeit few) Chinese work I’ve read, so I wonder if it has to do with translation into English. The style is sort of working for me in this book, though the same “problem” has made me give up on books before.

(view spoiler)[ I’m enjoying it so far, though it’s not totally what I expected and a bit at a distance (maybe due to the flatness of the style). It’s oddly reminding me a bit of The Call of Cthulhu: There’s this sense of doom (the sequence of suicides, the mysterious war, the references to enviornmental disaster, the idea that science is invalid...) permeating through, as the (somewhat) neutral narrator investigates along with us, though so far it feels as if Wang has only reached the fringes of the issue.

The plot is slow, except maybe for the opening chapter and the chapter where Wang finds the countdown on his photographs, and each chapter, especially in the second part feels really disjoint for one another. It’s as if we keep finding different puzzle pieces, but without the guarantee that they even belong to the same puzzle!

Most of the science stuff is going a bit over my head, and I wish I knew more of Chinese history - especially for the game! (The footnotes help.) i found the game chapter really weird and intriguing, we’ll see if he goes back to play it again. (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, I'm definitely putting that to translation. It's better than many I've read, which is something I guess!

(view spoiler)[ I did think it was weird though at that point that Wang has basically abandoned his wife and is going to take care of his dead crush's mother because his crush's ex said so? I'm trying to get a grasp on the societal norms and this is so far outside of them for me that it feels absurd. (hide spoiler)]

In regards to Ye Wangjie: (view spoiler)[I feel like he had a good reason for it other than Yang Dong. Wasn’t part of it that he was investigating these things anyway? Like Yang Dong committed suicide in that apartment in her mother’s bed, so didn’t he take a look in there to see if there were any clues? I don’t feel like it was solely to check up on her the first time. (hide spoiler)]

That's a good point, Sarah, thanks for reminding me of that!

While there may be some cultural differences, I wouldn't necessarily read too much into them. I think it's more that Cixin Liu isn't very good at writing believable characters and plots, or very interested in doing so.

I tend to think of sci-fi stories as falling on a spectrum with "ideas" on one end and "story and characters" at the other, and this entire series falls way on the "ideas" end of the spectrum.

I've finished!

(view spoiler)[ I didn't really like it. The physics bits were cool but the "story" around them was pretty weak to me, or at least the lack of exploration around it made me not care. I also don't think I like books that require you to be in a game. It's like movies about hacking--even if they stuff going on is really cool, it's not nearly as fun to watch as it is to do. I thought the points about despair were well done.

Did I get this right? The enfolded protons just shut down all the particle accelerators after a certain point? That was the big plan? (hide spoiler)]

Pretty much. The first book is really just laying the groundwork. The meat of the plot starts in book two.

hopefully the next book on your very long BR list will be better Allison. One thing I thought was really interesting was (view spoiler)[ the parallels drawn between Mao and Ye Wenjie. Mao sends his Red guard youth out into poor lowland villages to basically hide them away because they’d gotten out of control. Ye Wenjie later says in regards to the big 3BP groups- “I started the fire but I couldn’t control the burn.” I feel like there was a third character’s arc who paralleled this too, but I can’t remember who it was now. (hide spoiler)]

That's a good point, Sarah! Very relevant to the themes of the book. And I should say, I did enjoy the themes. Like I said in my review, this actually was the best set up I've seen in quite some time for this type of revolution. It did a good job of conveying even to ignorant outsiders like myself a taste of what it must have been like. Extremely distressing. In a good way to read about!

I read this several years ago and enjoyed it (it being the completely different cultural context) enough that I dipped into Chinese Sci-fi a bit afterwards.

However after reading the full trilogy it does feel like the set-up for all that follows. But the cultural differences from ‘white guy sci-fi’ ARE really important for understanding the decisions the characters make.

I liked it, I even enjoyed it. I read it at a quicker pace than I normally do (trying to escape book mountain), so instead of trying to think too hard about things, I just let it all wash over me. Perhaps this is the way to go. I also don't have a strong knowledge of physics, so I wasn't critically analyzing those aspects of the story. (view spoiler)[Frankly, I enjoyed how the last section just became more and more over the top. Big meeting of all the game-players, busted by the military, shoot up a small nuclear bomb!... The whole Panama Canal scene, slicing a giant shipping tanker like bread!... Going to Trisolaris!... The Trisolarians doing totally bonkers things with sub-atomic particles!! Bring it on, it's all good. (hide spoiler)]

Though most characters were two-dimensional, I did like a few of them who were more developed. (view spoiler)[Da Shi, of course, was a hoot. Enjoyable, jerky know-it-all. Ye Wenjie has the most development in terms of her personal history and motivations. So you can see where she is coming from even if you wouldn't make the same choices. I also sympathized with Wang Miao, since we got to experience with him while he had his whole world come apart. I do agree with the point above that it was a bit off that he just walked off from his family without any further comment. (hide spoiler)]

David wrote: "Pretty much. The first book is really just laying the groundwork. The meat of the plot starts in book two."

Oh dear. I'm listening to it, and having a lot of trouble keeping track of everything. And apparently I'm not getting footnotes. And all the names. And the chapter that says "omitted" a lot meant almost nothing to me. I really don't want to read more books just to be able to appreciate this.

And I don't like learning that the science is so absurd. I mean, couldn't the (view spoiler)[human computer accomplish *anything* to lead to eventual development of a real one? (hide spoiler)]

But my immediate question is from approximately 60 % I think. When there's a meetup (view spoiler)[ of avid Three-Body players, two of the seven are kicked out because they hold the wrong view of the influence of the Aztecs, or something like that. Can someone please clarify that whole thing for me? And, please, what is the 'reward' for the remaining five who are now 'comrades' with the leader? Some sort of organization has recruited them? (hide spoiler)]
Please tell me now even if you'd rather say 'you'll find out later' because I'm very confused, don't mind spoilers, and anyway will be further along by the time I see your answer! :)

...these books might be hard to follow on audio. They're confusing enough as it is!

It's been a few years since I read this, but in a nutshell (and yes, mega-super-spoilers): (view spoiler)[The game, and the meeting, are recruitment for an organization that is part of a conspiracy to assist in the Trisolaran invasion of earth. In the Aztec metaphor, Humans are the Aztecs, and Trisolarans are the Conquistadors. The two who were rejected had voiced disagreement with the Conquistadors destroying the Aztecs (and the potential of the Trisolarans destroying Humanity) and thus could not be expected to support the conspiracy. (hide spoiler)]

Oh! Dang....
Thank you David, things are going to making more sense now.
I do wish that I had access to a text edition, but it just doesn't seem to me to be worth the dent in my tight budget.

I LOVED this so much! Every aspect of the story had my full attention and created a sense of wonder and awe in me; the mysteries, the suspense, the setting and history and cultural background, the game, the alien contact and threat of invasion, the world of Trisolaris, the physics - everything! Of course I didn’t like reading the violent bits, and I too didn’t appreciate how Wang seemed to forget about his family, but that all seemed to fit with the story so I “accepted” it as best I could. Overall, this hit all the right spots for me and I’m anxious for more!

Cheryl, I personally would not want to read this on Kindle or listen to it. I felt it was very easy to read and comphrend (except some of the physics) but I think it would have been difficult for me to follow on audio, or even kindle because of the writing style, the way it jumped around from different perspectives and times and places (also in-game moments), and of course the footnotes were helpful. I feel for you, it’s frustrating not knowing how well a book is going to be read in e-book or audio format when you first acquire it, but I really hope it gets better for you!

Thank you, Ashley,
I'm almost done and I can see how it would be much better in print. I won't rate it, but I will comment in my review about my experience.