I felt both bored and annoyed at The Dark Forest (sequel to Liu Cixin‘s The Three Body Problem). The plot was convoluted and wandering, but not all that bad – but the people in it continued to be cardboard cutouts of one motivation, and optionally one emotion or one habit, if you were lucky. Also, the vanishingly few female characters had even less of a personality (and were mostly partners-of-somebody with little page time and even less impact). One female character was literally introduced directly as the protagonist’s fantasy and then fridged to provide motivation for him.
The exploration of future development of humanity was the thing I enjoyed most. Other than that, most developments and actions felt super random, like they were completely contrived just to further the plot, no matter if they made sense or not. I won’t continue with this series.
