The Three Body Trilogy, by Cixin Liu
Famous sci-fi trilogy.
Look, I don't know – I thought these were fine. And I realise how hard it is to write something this long and complex and make it fine, so maybe it's good. But I didn't think it was that good? Many of my friends are obsessed with these books, and frankly I don't get it.
Here's a book-thought, possibly kind of spoilerish...
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There's a character in the books who is meant to be world-historically strategic and "rational", in the sense of not being swayed by emotional considerations. And yet, he's unable to execute the (fairly simple) plan of killing one other person.
Also, come to think of it, the alien species who are meant to be more developed than humans are also unable to execute their fairly simple plan to kill one person.
As such, the whole series hinges on (at least) two moments of suspension of disbelief that i.m.o. contradict the whole premise of the books.
As is so often the case, I feel like your ability to enjoy that kind of book is entirely dependent on whether you have the kind of mind that allows you to put aside one or two big things so long as the rest of the work is coherent.
And (to get even more speculative), maybe this is a problem for universe-spanning sci-fi books in general: that for narrative/plot purposes they focus on one or two little people, who then have to be world-historically strategic and smart in order for it to make sense that they're single-handedly saving the universe, and/but also need to make dumb mistakes so that the plot has ups and downs to it?
You could compare with (say) a romcom where the hero has to royally fuck things up, in order that he can later make things right. And this can stretch credibility even in the romcom, because this otherwise Kind Sensitive Man suddenly has this one incredible blind-spot. But it makes so much less sense when the hero is the saviour of humanity.
In short, I think the Three Body Problem is caught between a Great Man Theory of Cosmic History and the needs of plot, and the tension between the two made me lose all faith in the narrative. Still a good book overall!, made me think about various interesting things, but I'm still mildly resentful I "had" to read it to keep up with all my friends who make references to it....