Started on 4.13.25, finished on 4.20.25

I hadn’t heard of the very popular and beloved Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy until 3 Body Problem came out on Netflix, probably because I very rarely read science fiction. As soon as the show came out, I put the first book (The Three-Body Problem) on hold at the library. Of course, so did everyone else, so there was a long hold list, and it’s taken me until today (about a year later) to finally finish the third book.

My lack of science fiction experience also means I don’t have a great frame of reference to review this book/series, but that’s okay—I’m always just telling you how I feel anyway. These books are huge, I think around 600 pages each, so it was a lot to get through. But in my opinion it was absolutely, 100% worth it. The story is gigantic, extraordinarily well-written, meandering yet precise, never what I expected, and ultimately absolutely heartbreaking.

One thing I especially want to point out is how accessible the books felt to me. There’s a lot of what feels like science in this series (to what extent it’s real/accurate is none of my concern), and I felt like the author explained things in a way that felt perfectly aligned—not too technical, but not too basic, either. I feel like that is probably very intentionally calibrated, and I really appreciated it.

Click here to buy the trilogy on Bookshop.org

I have no favorite quotes to share! These books are very plot heavy, and anything that stuck out to me didn’t really feel like it made much sense out of context.