Well, I like the historical stuff too, that wasn't the problem--it was that it wasn't connecting with anything yet, and I didn't like any of the characters in anything from the historical stuff or the modern stuff.

I read once that the book had been rearranged by the translator--that the original was not in internal chronological order, but differently. And I wonder if the effect I got out of it (irritating progression of randoom events in the lives of random people I don't care about) would have been different if it were arranged in the original way, so we got the connections Liu Cixin was making.

Traduttore tradittore.