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A review by acinonyx
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Another wild ride of a book. The scope of the authors understanding is continually impressive. Strangely, this ending seemed to wrap up very neatly, without much sense of a plot forward. Curious what the hook of the next one will be!
Edit: I completely forgot about this one glaring criticism I have for a part of this book! Without spoiling anything, there is an entire subplot that stretches on for several chapters about a male character’s “dream woman”, and I’ve never in my life read something more cringey. If it had any purpose at all it had to have been to highlight how much of a weird loser this character was to the reader, but his misogynistic obsession not only goes unchecked, but is actually rewarded in an absurd way. You’d think that if there was this much time paid to this subplot, it would come up later as being somehow relevant to the overarching plot, or important to the character’s development; and you would be wrong. Aside from some visual and emotional callbacks and minor character decisions that could have been handled in any number of different ways, this soliloquy of a man’s unhealthy view of women is completely pointless to the very end of the book. Maybe it somehow develops more relevance in the last book, but I would be shocked if even then I would consider it justified. A sad stain on an otherwise great book.
Edit: I completely forgot about this one glaring criticism I have for a part of this book! Without spoiling anything, there is an entire subplot that stretches on for several chapters about a male character’s “dream woman”, and I’ve never in my life read something more cringey. If it had any purpose at all it had to have been to highlight how much of a weird loser this character was to the reader, but his misogynistic obsession not only goes unchecked, but is actually rewarded in an absurd way. You’d think that if there was this much time paid to this subplot, it would come up later as being somehow relevant to the overarching plot, or important to the character’s development; and you would be wrong. Aside from some visual and emotional callbacks and minor character decisions that could have been handled in any number of different ways, this soliloquy of a man’s unhealthy view of women is completely pointless to the very end of the book. Maybe it somehow develops more relevance in the last book, but I would be shocked if even then I would consider it justified. A sad stain on an otherwise great book.