I have been reading the English translations and the characters and especially their dialogues feel very fake. I do appreciate the hard science aspect of the books but the long monologues, kids speaking like middle-aged philosophers, and army personnel being one-dimensional macho men breaks the immersion for me. It has the depth of a 1980s low-budget thriller.
I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction or translations of Chinese books. I don’t know if this is genre-related.
Good to know! This is a favorite of mine as well.
It gets recommended a lot, but Red Mars has a lot if science content, especially geology-related, in case you haven’t read it yet.
I had never heard of it! And there is goes, on my reading list. Thanks! I have hardly read any geology focus scifi book yet… exciting!