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julcoh 's review for:
Death's End
by Cixin Liu
This book's scope expands well beyond the first two in the series. Is that a good thing? Yes and no.
It's incredibly clear to me that the author is an engineer first. Liu delights in his descriptions of orbital mechanics, speed of light shenanigans, and general scientific concepts as applied to the dynamics of his stories. The worldbuilding and overall arcs of his stories are certainly fascinating and well-crafted. Unfortunately, he is a much weaker writer than he is worldbuilder and technical communicator. The galactic scale of this story is muted by the vast blandness of his characters.
The writing is riddled with similes used to convey meaning and emotional depth, and with some exception it just doesn't hit for me.
To be fair—how much of that is Liu's writing, and how much is the translation from Chinese to English?
I know it's complete apples-to-oranges, but reading this after Catch-22 is a stark comparison to legitimately great writing—joyous to read, delightful phrasing, generating laughter and horror in the same paragraph—while Liu's writing here is at best neutral compared to the story arcs and sci-fi elements. The book is full of "this happened, then this happened, then this happened..." to fill the space between more important character moments. Interesting as a sci-fi history, but does not a great book make.
It's incredibly clear to me that the author is an engineer first. Liu delights in his descriptions of orbital mechanics, speed of light shenanigans, and general scientific concepts as applied to the dynamics of his stories. The worldbuilding and overall arcs of his stories are certainly fascinating and well-crafted. Unfortunately, he is a much weaker writer than he is worldbuilder and technical communicator. The galactic scale of this story is muted by the vast blandness of his characters.
The writing is riddled with similes used to convey meaning and emotional depth, and with some exception it just doesn't hit for me.
To be fair—how much of that is Liu's writing, and how much is the translation from Chinese to English?
I know it's complete apples-to-oranges, but reading this after Catch-22 is a stark comparison to legitimately great writing—joyous to read, delightful phrasing, generating laughter and horror in the same paragraph—while Liu's writing here is at best neutral compared to the story arcs and sci-fi elements. The book is full of "this happened, then this happened, then this happened..." to fill the space between more important character moments. Interesting as a sci-fi history, but does not a great book make.