The Three-Body Problem took me three attempts to get into and I'm grateful I persisted. The first section, set during the Cultural Revolution, is doing more than the rest of the book. Liu Cixin is establishing that human civilization is capable of things that disqualify us from moral authority in a first-contact scenario — that's a remarkable framing for a science fiction novel.

The hard science sections are dense and I won't pretend I followed all the physics. But the core ideas are communicated clearly enough to feel them. The Trisolaran orbital problem isn't just a puzzle to solve — it's an argument about the limits of what reason can achieve in a chaotic environment.

Ye Wenjie is the character I keep coming back to. Her decision at the relay station is the most consequential moment in the trilogy and the novel makes you understand it without endorsing it. That's a difficult thing to do.