(BEWARE SPOILERS)
This story is about a man named Fan that used to love to climb mountains but decides to "punish" himself by never climbing again after an incident that kills his friends. To avoid climbing, Fan starts working as a geologist on a boat and never leaves the boat even when they are in port for long periods of time.
At this point, I found the story interesting...but from here on, I felt it went “off-track” (for me). I will explain more below in the "Story" section...

I will break down my review into sections. PLEASE keep in mind, this review is written by my “taste in books”/my opinion. You may have an opposite opinion…each section is rated 1 to 5 stars. (Check out my library ratings of other books to see if your tastes are the same as mine before judging this book by my review)

The Cover: I really liked the artwork on the cover. It was interesting and grabs the attention.
3/5 stars

The “Idea”: Very unique ideas dealing with the alien race’s history/planet. Well thought out.
4/5 stars

The story: I found the beginning of the short story to be interesting but once the “space ship” arrived, I felt the events (while maybe possible) not very probably AT ALL. I understand this is SCI-FI/fiction, but how many supposedly invading alien armies do you know that hold a 30-page conversation with a man that climbs a mountain made of water? Then, the alien’s portion of the conversation is not even in spoken words, they display their words on a large screen under the ship while the man is standing on the mountain of water reading them. During this conversation the “we are here to destroy your planet” aliens (that is what the other characters in the story believed) proceed to describe their race’s and planet’s ENTIRE history. Fan even tries to make “witty banter” with them (while still believing they arrived to destroy the Earth). Then finally Fan actually asks the aliens why they came to earth. Their answer…”we just wanted to chat”. REALLY?
2/5 stars

The writing: The authors writing style read more like a history book or an essay on the history and evolution of an alien race/planet. One of the main things I learned in my quest to become a better writer is that one should usually (granted, not always) “show” not “tell” the story/action. After Fan starts having this conversation with the aliens, very little actually happens in the present. I found this style (at least with this story) to be very slow and tiring. The story was around 40-pages or so (I have a Kindle so I am not 100% positive) but it took me forever (not literally) to finish reading this.
2/5 stars

The Author: The author, Cixin Lui, apparently is very famous in China and has won multiple awards. Someone even compared him to Asimov (don’t recall where I read that) but I can tell you, this is NOT TRUE. So, he seems to be popular in some places: he is an award winner (in China), supposedly well liked (in China) and has multiple short stories in print. That should warrant him 3-stars here.
3/5 stars

FINAL WORD: If you like well thought out SCI-FI and don’t mind the “show” style of delivery, pick this one up. It’s a cheap read at .99 cents on Amazon (as of June 2012).
I personally could not get into this book. It seemed like the author came up with an idea for an alien race/planet/history but couldn’t or didn’t want to take the time to write a story around the idea so he just threw together something on the beginning and end of a long conversation about history--more like an essay than a story. I WILL be reading/reviewing all the Cixin Lui short stories available in English since I already bought them all.

OVERALL: 3/5 stars (2.8 stars rounded up) ( )