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A review by hiroto
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
2.0
The particular brand of misogyny in this book is so present, potent, but also so old-fashioned it’s almost charming (almost). The main character dreams his perfect woman (he literally invents her, models her as he’d like, and fall in love with her), and when he has the power to make her “real” (ie : finding a real person corresponding to his ideals), he takes it and thus, a woman is kidnapped by the government and they fall in love and she becomes his wife. She’s so ethereal, she has no agenda, she falls in love because she’s impressed by him and by his intelligence but also because of the weird dynamic imbalance (he’s supposed to be one of the world’s savior after all). Some paragraphs about their “love” were so, so weird, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to sigh.
That being said… Once again at least 300pages in the middle of the book amount to nothing. I truly mean : nothing. Just the woes of our protagonist, who doesn’t know why he’s been picked to be the world’s savior, and the government has to get back the wife -and his kid too- to put him to work (great apparition of the “woman in refrigerator” trope, quite literally). He’s so incompetent and complacent for so long, it’s almost soothing when something finally does happen. Shame that it takes the last chapters to do so.
Because really, it’s in the last chunk of the book that the magic happens. The Dark Forest Theory is fascinating (I’d recommend watching Kurgezatsz video on the matter), and Liu Cixin has great, great ideas about technology, evolution of technology, how essential it is to our civilization, but also how civilization could potentially react to ven greater technology… Those are all ideas I’ve never thought about, and they are honestly thought-provoking.
But the book is so long, and some characters are so…. I’d like to use stupid, but they’re not : they’re vapid, and one dimensional, and there’s a lot of pro-militia imagery that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Still, I want to know what happens next!
That being said… Once again at least 300pages in the middle of the book amount to nothing. I truly mean : nothing. Just the woes of our protagonist, who doesn’t know why he’s been picked to be the world’s savior, and the government has to get back the wife -and his kid too- to put him to work (great apparition of the “woman in refrigerator” trope, quite literally). He’s so incompetent and complacent for so long, it’s almost soothing when something finally does happen. Shame that it takes the last chapters to do so.
Because really, it’s in the last chunk of the book that the magic happens. The Dark Forest Theory is fascinating (I’d recommend watching Kurgezatsz video on the matter), and Liu Cixin has great, great ideas about technology, evolution of technology, how essential it is to our civilization, but also how civilization could potentially react to ven greater technology… Those are all ideas I’ve never thought about, and they are honestly thought-provoking.
But the book is so long, and some characters are so…. I’d like to use stupid, but they’re not : they’re vapid, and one dimensional, and there’s a lot of pro-militia imagery that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Still, I want to know what happens next!