His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. When Chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. Reviewįrom the New York Times bestselling author of the Three-Body Trilogy, Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning is the story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against the drive to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.īall Lightning, by award-winning Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu, is the story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against a push to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.

The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of mysterious natural phenomenon. A standalone science fiction novel from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Three-Body Problem.

Ball lightning cixin liu review