same here. Not just the names, but IMO even the storylines get pretty convoluted by the second book. Game of thrones number of story branches, but French New Wave thickness of plots.
For me its even the plot. I mean scientific parts are very fine, but human parts are meh at best.
[minor spoilers below]
It is practically a racist book where everybody non-chinese is evil, conspires to harm chinese in a comical villain fashion, should be killed, and is killed eventually. I get that 100 years ago similar literature was OK in the west too, but we moved our societies quite a bit since then.
> I get that 100 years ago similar literature was OK in the west too, but we moved our societies quite a bit since then.
100 years ago? Today, the ratio of militaristic "America F** Yeah!" sci-fi vs every other language is probably 100/1 and the amount of times the Chinese and Russian are the ones portrayed as evil in that literature is literally orders of magnitude greater. Are those also racist books?
> Chinese and Russian are the ones portrayed as evil in that literature
I've not noticed that. OTOH as a brit, the number of times I see us portrayed in American films as cold, unemotion, untrustworthy, manipulative, I could go on...
Edit: on reflection that does seem to have died down a bit in recent years.
