Really? I personally loved it. Though I admit that it was mostly the atmosphere of the tea shop. Haha

I won’t say any names or titles because the author is not a public figure. Years ago, I was given something to beta read by them and I cannot even put into words how bad it was… It was actually the only time I did not finish a beta read. I just couldn’t.

I didn’t tell them like that of course, but damn, it was actually disturbing. There was so much unnecessary violence and gore. The main character on page one did something that made me immediately hate him and be disgusted by him.

I won’t say any names or titles because the author is not a public figure. Years ago, I was given something to beta read by them and I cannot even put into words how bad it was… It was actually the only time I did not finish a beta read. I just couldn’t.

I didn’t tell them like that of course, but damn, it was actually disturbing. There was so much unnecessary violence and gore. The main character on page one did something that made me immediately hate him and be disgusted by him.

I get it. I do actually think the “paper thin characters” can be a positive for some (me included). If you only like strong characters and character driven stories, it of course isn’t, and that’s fair.
However, part of the reason I like science fiction is the idea-drivenness and oftentimes strong characters get in the way of that. I genuinely don’t see how Trisolaris could have worked with more of a character-focused writing without becoming an entirely different book.

And, well, a lot of people would probably have preferred that version, but I wouldn’t have, personally.

That depends also on the topic. For mathematics, for example, textbooks never really get out of date.

For zoology, botany, etc. it doesn’t really as well, as they have been established fields for a long time. There might be taxonomic changes and scientific name changes over time, though.

The most “susceptible” to obsolescence of my textbooks is probably the “Molecular Biology pf the Cell” one, as that is a field where there’s a lot of changes and new insights still.