Aron 2 Blue

Now on Netflix (sigh). I didn't watch it, I read the English edition. "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. What a weird thing. The start during the Cultural Revolution in China is really disturbing. A wholesale persecution of scientists and social elites that seems crazy. The zither bothered me. Ultra strong molecular wires - nanomaterials - can be strong under tension but not stand up to shear forces. How fast does it cut?  Unfolding a proton from higher dimensions so that it expands to the size of a planet but still has the mass of a proton - I don't think gravity would matter at all. It sorta hangs together, but is also wildly fantastic. Sci-fi, I guess?  I did enjoy the strangeness of the fairly direct translation. I liked everything enough to keep going and read the full trilogy. Recommended if you can overlook any issues caused by translation. 

SPOILERS I wanted to write down what I thought the major events of the first book because I'm re-reading the series so I can read the 5th book with everything fresh in my mind. Opening: Gavilar assassination by Sveth, truthless, assassin in white. Lashing to change gravity, stick objects together. Kaladin: we get his full back story, training as a surgeon growing up, joining the army to protect his little brother Tien, then having to watch him die. Later, he kills a shardbearer to protect his lighteye lord Amaram, then when he refuses to claim the shardblade because it caused the death of most of his squad, he has to watch the rest of his squad killed and is made a slave, so Amaram can claim the shards. This is told in flashbacks throughout the book. The main timeline follows him as a slave, meeting Syl the spren, then being made a bridgeman in Sadeas's army on the Shattered Plains. He despairs and nearly kills himself, Syl convinces him to try to help. He figures out how to tr...