The Redemption of Time by Baoshu
“Yun Tianming betrayed the human race. He’s spent the millennia since in exile.
But has he finally nears the end of his existence, he is offered another reprieve, another regeneration, if he will joining the fight against an entity that threatens the entire universe".”
This was the most interesting companion novel I’ve ever read.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu has a passionate and huge fanbase. Baoshu being a very big fan himself. In the introduction of this book he talks about when the third book came out, Death’s End, he had friends who were emailing him page by page when the book released in China. He had been out of the country but had friends who knew how much he was loving this story. (#RealOnes #GetYouFriendsLikeBaoshu’sFriends, lol)
When it got to the end of the trilogy Baoshu and fans alike continued to have discussions theorizing with each other what happened to some of the characters, and what events may have occurred with some of the characters we didn’t get to fully see. This inspired him to continue writing. Which eventually led to Cixin Liu reading his work and approving it. It got translated by Ken Liu and published! Important Note: Events in The Redemption of Time are not cannon!
If you have not read Rememberance of Earth’s Past trilogy I highly suggest you do!! It’s an incredible work of science fiction. It is mind boggling, extensionally dreadful, scary, inspiring, and imaginative!
I really liked that Baoshu was so curious about Tianming’s story and what was going on with him while the rest of the story was unfolding. The book beings with AA and Yun Tianming on Planet Blue. Tianming begins to share with AA what happened to him when his brain was aboard the Trisolarian fleet. This was so imaginative and really cool to read how Baoshu pictured what could have been happening to Tianming and to the Trisolarians. Some of it I could agree with, that that had seemed like a great probability. For example, the Trisolarians using his memories and dreams to make entertainment that would appeal to humans and thus gaining trust.
But other aspects felt like quiet the stretch. I either disagreed just based on how I perceived some characters to be or I just found it unfitting for the story.
Often times throughout this I didn’t like how AA or Cheng Xin were written. Their whole characters were betrayed as “jealous women”. And I don’t remember them reading like that at all in the trilogy.
The ending of this story was really cool I think he tied it up in a really great way. When it got to page 109 I made a note that it was really really feeling like I was reading fan fiction. And nothing wrong with that! He was just introducing new elements that I felt were somewhat out of place.
The writing is heavily tell not show. Often pages and pages go by of one character basically monologuing about something that happened. I would have liked to see those things happen. It made the story drag on.
All in all this was a fun read. If you love The Three Body Problem I think you should definitely add this to your tbr as a cool way to keep the story going. It’ll probably prompt your own curiosity and creativity to shine!
If all of this is intriguing to you please go check out the YouTube channel Quinn’s Ideas. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRXGGVBzHLUfIzEhovpQJ2ENiNvJoOD2A&si=so6C1AyzPdL_ybjr Quinn creates incredible videos dissecting sci-fi books and he has a whole playlist that is just about the Rememberance of Earth’s Past trilogy! Highly highly recommend! His videos are also on the platform Nebula.
