Reviews

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

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reneereads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

sugaralmond's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

bluejaybooks's review against another edition

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4.0

I liked this book better than its predecessor. The plot was more cohesive, and a little faster paced, though still slow. This is hard sci-fi at heart. One of the things I love best about this series is the way it’s made me think.

That said, I’m happy with how this book left the story and am not sure I’ll continue.

booksandnailz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

I was really intrigued by the story telling in the first book of this series, so I was very interested in seeing how this book progressed the story. I enjoyed the story it told - how does humanity react to a threat 400 years away? What plans do they make, how does society react, and and what are the biggest obstacles? This story explores all of these questions and more. I enjoyed that the story was heavy on the science in this science fiction tale. I was thrown off by the fact that there are virtually no chapters in this whole book. There are 3 parts with one or two chapters in part two as time passes, but the book is essentially one big long clump of paragraphs with nothing breaking it up so it was hard to get through. POVs change with only a space in between to indicate the change. Was this a choice of the translator? (who is different from the translator for books 1 & 3) There are many POVs in this story but no real “main character.” I’ll definitely be reading the next book and looking forward to Ken Liu as the translator again.

sci_01134's review against another edition

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4.75

One of the best sci-fi books I've read in a while. It felt like I was just going on a journey with the author through this extremely well thought out world. He perfectly walked the line between a future so advanced it's basically magic and you just have to go with it, and creatively thinking about what our world might evolve into. It felt a bit like PROJECT HAIL MARY in its sciency-ness/creative thinking. How would you stop/thwart/solve an alien invasion?? I think the author thinks about several possibilities and really dives into exploring how these possibilities play out. So cool.