I really struggled reading this book. It was extremely slow paced for the first 60-70% and I had a difficult time differentiating the characters from each other. Unlike other reviewers I read about online, I didn’t have a hard time with the fact that the book jumped around in time. But I wanted to expose myself to something outside my comfort zone. I am a little bit familiar with the big picture of “Eastern Literary Traditions” and understand that the fast-paced hero-drive narrative structure of Western pop-culture is just one way of telling a story. In the end, the last 25% of the book made it all worthwhile as all the various threads came together and we finally understood the nature of the various threats alluded to in the first 2/3 of the book.
For some unknown reason, scientists are killing themselves, and a secret government/military group is collecting others. One scientist starts seeing numbers in the photos he takes, and they are counting down. What is happening? Meanwhile, a long history lesson about the Chinese Cultural Revolution (of which I have only a little knowledge) brings forth a major player in the quest to communicate with or receive communications from an alien intelligence. Finally, an immersive VR game is telling the history or future of some unknown alien planet.
There is some well-described physics and hard SF principles in this book. I don’t think all of the physics is real, but it was very interesting for me as a scientist to read about, even though there were some sections of the book that seemed to be the author talking to the reader.
In the end, I struggled to read this, though, and I am only giving it 3 stars just from the difficulty. I found myself dreading reading it, though like I said above, the last 20% really made up for the slow start, and apparently the sequels are faster paced. I will add this to my never-ending TBR pile but I am going to reward myself with some fluffy space opera or military SF as my next fun read.