Death's End

I started this book last week, but I blitzed through 91% of it (according to my kindle, ~550 pages) in about a day and a half.

In short, Liu Cixin is totally insane, in the best way possible. Each consecutive scene makes the ones before it feel minuscule in comparison. I’m left with a sense of awe and wonder on the grandest possible scales. As the Trisolarans said at the end of The Three-Body Problem, “You are bugs.”

(The sense of the series is much more empowering than that last line, but it’s hard to ignore it now)

Edit 11 hrs after: I’m still thinking about the Singer. What a fascinating, whimsical character. His chapter does so much work, and the whole last act of the book is carried by it.

Wohin uns Menschen (und die Trisolarier) die Zukunft auch bringt, das Buch endet erstaunlich und stimmig. Mir haben die drei Bücher außerordentlich gut gefallen.

I read this one for completeness, but the series got less good over time, with too much Malthus and just so game theory stories. The later books treat physics like poorly done fantasy magic, where the resolution to the previous dilemma is some new hand waving loosely justified by terminology.

Von den drei Büchern war es das Schlechteste. Letztlich ein "normales" Science Fiction-Buch. Wer wenig Zeit hat, sollte nur die ersten beiden Bände lesen.

Sin duda, el mejor volumen de la trilogía.

Es un libro muy denso, en el que no dejan de pasar cosas, pero que te deja con ganas de que sigan pasando durante más tiempo.
Que bien escrito está todo.

The first half was a weird slog of clumsy exposition and rampant sexism (and gender binarism generally) but I actually really enjoyed the ending. On the whole I have to admire this trilogy for the sheer scale of its ambition, even though I think there are ways it fell short of the mark.

It's a gigantic trilogy, but so worth the time. Let me entice you, the interested reader of science fiction, with three facts:

1) This is the first major work of Chinese science fiction to reach a mass American audience, and the first book won the Hugo.
2) It contains a terrifying, but plausible, answer to Fermi's Paradox.
3) Despite this, it can also be read as an extended metaphor and exhortation to hope, kindness and love in the face of global catastrophe.

The story is gripping, the perspective is unique, and the reach impressive. I'm glad I made room for it on my shelf.

This one was a bit overwrought, I thought. There was lots of handwringing and very obvious injection of Communist ethos into the writing, which was very interesting to see in the first two but in this one it felt forced and unnecessary. It was also about 30-40% longer than it had to be.