The Three-Body Problem
I'm torn about this book -- the premise is interesting, the world is novel, and the book is well written. The book has a strong environmental theme, with a focus on the environmental impact of Chinese economic development during Mao's cultural revolution. However, despite all that the book didn't "grab" me. I think perhaps its because there is a lot of effort spent describing things which ultimately don't really matter -- like weather or not the desktop PC being used by one of the characters is the current model or not. Or perhaps its because I didn't actually like any of the characters -- none of them is what I would call a nice person. Or perhaps this is an artifact of the book having been translated from Chinese, and perhaps different stylisting expectations or some such? Either way, I don't think I'll finish this trilogy.