This book's been on my to-read list since I heard of it, but I'd be lying if I said the Hugo results didn't push it closer to the top. 
 The short version of my thoughts: 
 This is a wonderful book, (I presume) a beautiful and faithful translation, and it definitely deserved this year's Hugo. 
 Longer thoughts: 
 Unlike the other first-contact novel I've read this year, Liu Cixin sees first contact itself as a destructively transformative process, and it is this thinking which informs the direction of the book. Even when direct contact has not yet occurred, the simple knowledge that there is an Other is divisive for society. 
 Liu draws on the history of the Cultural Revolution to frame the disinfranchised elements of his society. Ultimately, the world he creates is chillingly believable. (view spoiler)[ More precisely, in the way Liu tells it, the idea that one disenfranchised academic--and later other elites--would betray humanity without hesitation is believably compelling. (hide spoiler)] 
 As is typical in Science-Fiction, the characterization is somewhat cold--events and manuverings, externally visible, are of greater import to the story than internal emotion, but this distance does not render the book entirely dry and clinical. When it counts, the emotion (however secondary) does come through. 
 If I have one quibble with this book, it is that I never felt surprised. Certainly, there were things I did not predict, but the nature of the author's foreshadowing was such that everything seemed intensely logical, and any moment that would have been "Wait, what?! ...ah, I get it now." were instead received as, "Oh! Of course, that makes sense." in my mind. It's difficult to claim that the foreshadowing was too heavy, as I was also never bored, but I do think it toed that line. That said, the weaving together of different narratives and time lines was very well done. 
 I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.