The Dark Forest

Augh, so uneven! The writing is so stilted (possibly the fault of the translation?), the characters are cardboard and interchangeable, there are SO MANY really awkward and clumsy shoehorns of exposition and gratuitous political/scientific details, and I don't even want to talk about the ways in which the tiny number of female characters were all SUPER problematic. The first 2/3 of the book was a real struggle.

But! Things really picked up in the last third of the book, and it raised some really interesting philosophical questions, and kept me guessing about a couple of things, sooooooo that's cool I guess. But the plot still had some giant holes and then there was the whole "Humans won because, unlike this other super-advanced civilization, we understand the concept of deception. Oh and also love." thing Curious to see how the trilogy wraps up whenever they get around to translating it into English.