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A review by ashablue
Death's End by Cixin Liu
3.0
So close to the end on this one!
So many things to say!
Do you like hard science sci-fi? You will love this. If you enjoy endless tangents on how things work and how science does stuff you'll enjoy this, and I will admit I don't normally do so but Liu Cixin is one of the rare instances where it weaves well enough with the story that you don't get distracted by technical manuals.
This is a massive series, and the final book is, massively massive. It is epic. How epic? 3 centuries epic. Other galaxies epic. Other dimensions epic. It's epic. STARS GETTING BLOWN THE HECK UP EPIC!
Possibly one of the best hard sci-fi I've read in a long time and it's always a pleasure to read something from a different cultural point of reference.
Things that don't work for me in this last book especially. The issues with how women are represented started to creep in a bit in the second book but they kind of blow up in the third. Even though the main character of this installment is another female scientist, the narrative beats you over the head with notions of femininity and masculinity that seem out of place for a story set in so many different social and cultural epoch. Not least of which is the suggestion that femininity is the thing that truly dooms humanity. Certainly femininity traditionally defined. It's difficult to explain this point without going into spoilers. At first I appreciated the complexity of the female character in the first book, but getting to this book I've been disappointed, a feeling that began with book 2 and the imaginary girlfriend characterization ( won't get into that bit). Certainly there's a LOT of messages in this book about humanity as a whole, but the femininity as weakness in the face of real threat is a recurring message throughout and that did distract from the story.
I'm surprised I haven't seen more comments about this particular weakness of the book, possibly it's only weakness.
All that said, it's a massive accomplishment of the imagination in many other respects. The Dark Forest theory alone is a fascinating look at the pessimistic outcome of "what if there's alien life?". I'd recomend it for sure, just with the aforementioned caveat.
So many things to say!
Do you like hard science sci-fi? You will love this. If you enjoy endless tangents on how things work and how science does stuff you'll enjoy this, and I will admit I don't normally do so but Liu Cixin is one of the rare instances where it weaves well enough with the story that you don't get distracted by technical manuals.
This is a massive series, and the final book is, massively massive. It is epic. How epic? 3 centuries epic. Other galaxies epic. Other dimensions epic. It's epic. STARS GETTING BLOWN THE HECK UP EPIC!
Possibly one of the best hard sci-fi I've read in a long time and it's always a pleasure to read something from a different cultural point of reference.
Things that don't work for me in this last book especially. The issues with how women are represented started to creep in a bit in the second book but they kind of blow up in the third. Even though the main character of this installment is another female scientist, the narrative beats you over the head with notions of femininity and masculinity that seem out of place for a story set in so many different social and cultural epoch. Not least of which is the suggestion that femininity is the thing that truly dooms humanity. Certainly femininity traditionally defined. It's difficult to explain this point without going into spoilers. At first I appreciated the complexity of the female character in the first book, but getting to this book I've been disappointed, a feeling that began with book 2 and the imaginary girlfriend characterization ( won't get into that bit). Certainly there's a LOT of messages in this book about humanity as a whole, but the femininity as weakness in the face of real threat is a recurring message throughout and that did distract from the story.
I'm surprised I haven't seen more comments about this particular weakness of the book, possibly it's only weakness.
All that said, it's a massive accomplishment of the imagination in many other respects. The Dark Forest theory alone is a fascinating look at the pessimistic outcome of "what if there's alien life?". I'd recomend it for sure, just with the aforementioned caveat.