Mark Miller

Like most translated works I felt much of the story was messed up in localization but also this is a terribly written book. I’ll try not to add spoilers. I felt while the plot was interesting premise and the beginning started out very compelling. But then you get introduced to the main characters and this is where it starts to take a nose dive. the characters where abysmally written, very one note, emotionally cheesy and wooden; completely irrational. Numerous exposition dumps and things that just weren’t explained or added that didn’t make a whole lot of sense if this was supposed to be some super secret. The flow felt stilted and chunky one moment you’d have a very tense scene then it just shifts tone. There where interesting plot points but those were executed poorly. Silly scenes of virtual reality using these sensation suits which never did anything. Could of been made more believable if it was just made into a video game. Or this whole concept could be dropped entirely and made it into a believable research and using science to explore these inconsistencies cropping up in physics. This was one of the few books that I never finished right when the ETO group was introduced that’s when it left the rails to me, people acting with absolutely no common sense and just sounded like a corny cartoonish villain I wasn’t surprised who the main villain was she was. Since a few chapters in the amateurish clues left felt almost like a Dr. Evil reveal. Quite honestly I felt this series shouldn’t of been awarded the Hugo award. I felt this book won not on literary and story content but that it was from a Chinese author. Which makes me feel less respectful to the award; as it’s trying to award firsts than the quality of work.