Довгоочікуваний фінал трилогії "Пам'ять про минуле Землі" не залишить байдужим нікого. У масштабному, заворожливому полотні заключної частини читач знайде відповіді на споконвічні питання, які турбують кожного з нас: хто ми? звідки? куди прямуємо? Усе на світі скінченне: квантовомеханічні системи мають період напіврозпаду, людське життя не вічне, зорі невпинно еволюціонують, допоки не перетворюються на щось інше. І навіть, здавалося б, споконвічний Усесвіт не уникне обіймів Смерті. Людство, отримавши перемогу в першій сутичці з Трисолярисом, ствердилося у власній значущості й зважилося зазирнути в глибини космосу. Чи виявиться воно готовим до отриманих знань? Чи стане йому сил, мужності й завзяття не відвести погляду від чаруючої картини таємниць Буття?
Review of "Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #3)" on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
An excellent conclusion to one of the best sci-fi trilogies I've read.
The book as a whole was wonderful and I'm so glad I read it, but I do want to mention that as endings go, I felt the ending of the second book more satisfying and conclusive.
Some notes about the ending from my reread (for those who have read the book):
The ending was way more melodramatic than it needed to be, in my opinion. There were a couple easy solutions:
- Presumably AA and Yun Tianming had their own ship (or how did Tianming get there) so couldn't they have flown up to relativistic speeds and gone forward in time to meet the others? I'll admit that timing the deaccelaration would be extremely tricky since they didn't actually know when the others would come out of relativistic speeds, but it could probably be solved with some application …
An excellent conclusion to one of the best sci-fi trilogies I've read.
The book as a whole was wonderful and I'm so glad I read it, but I do want to mention that as endings go, I felt the ending of the second book more satisfying and conclusive.
Some notes about the ending from my reread (for those who have read the book):
The ending was way more melodramatic than it needed to be, in my opinion. There were a couple easy solutions:
- Presumably AA and Yun Tianming had their own ship (or how did Tianming get there) so couldn't they have flown up to relativistic speeds and gone forward in time to meet the others? I'll admit that timing the deaccelaration would be extremely tricky since they didn't actually know when the others would come out of relativistic speeds, but it could probably be solved with some application of the high-tech Trisolaran technology Tianming must inevitably have had. But there's an even simpler solution: - AA and Tianming should have lived in the mini-universe for a little while. The door could be set to alert them when the others come out of their light-speed travel, and since time seems to flow very differently in the mini-universe they could probably get back together after only a year or maybe even less.
Anyway. I get the point of the ending and why the author chose to do it this way, but it still felt very avoidable and I'm slightly disappointed in it because in the rest of the series, consequences of actions were so well thought out.
Often by the final part of a trilogy, the author has run out of steam a bit. That is definitely not the case here. Liu Cixin's imagination is even more incredible as he enlarges the scope of his third part orders of magnitude more than the previous volumes. A treat to read.
Den här bokserien (3 st böcker) blir bara mer och mer spännande och tankeeggande. Fascinerande om fysiken och kosmos. Finalen, just den här boken, är bäst.
Review of 'El fin de la muerte (Trilogía de los Tres Cuerpos, #3)' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
El derroche de ideas deslunbra y sorprende, CiFi hard pura, pero @liu_cixin cojea en el desarrollo de personajes. Clásico instantáneo aunque no la recomendaría a no habituales del género.
I suppose I don't read a ton of sci-fi, but this is one of the most satisfying payoffs I have ever read in any genre. This book drags a bit in places because Liu Cixin is incredibly meticulous about tying up loose ends and also feels the need to introduce a trillion new ideas, but it's all interesting and worthwhile. Once again, the dense science is balanced out with some very human, very heart-rending stuff. The whole trilogy is one of the best book series I've ever read. Can't say enough good things.
What is it about trilogies? And why is the third installment so often a let down? Maybe it's just me, preferring the middle of a journey over the destination. Anyway, while I had some problems with this book, I enjoyed it immensely.
Cixin Liu wraps up his incredible trilogy offering the reader more of what he served in the first two books: exotic culture, imaginative and mostly plausible use of science, and wild plot twists.
My problem is I think he tried too hard. At 600 pages, this is the longest book in the series. I felt that he really didn't hit his stride until about 200 pages in. He also tried to make use of inserting "excerpts" from a future work as a foreshadowing device. The problem is these weren't used much in the second half for no apparent reason, and more critically, the tone he uses in these …
What is it about trilogies? And why is the third installment so often a let down? Maybe it's just me, preferring the middle of a journey over the destination. Anyway, while I had some problems with this book, I enjoyed it immensely.
Cixin Liu wraps up his incredible trilogy offering the reader more of what he served in the first two books: exotic culture, imaginative and mostly plausible use of science, and wild plot twists.
My problem is I think he tried too hard. At 600 pages, this is the longest book in the series. I felt that he really didn't hit his stride until about 200 pages in. He also tried to make use of inserting "excerpts" from a future work as a foreshadowing device. The problem is these weren't used much in the second half for no apparent reason, and more critically, the tone he uses in these doesn't vary enough from the main narrative. Maybe something is lost in translation.
As always, I enjoyed all the Asian cultural references Liu puts in, though he doesn't come close to the high water mark he reached in The Three Body Problem. On the other hand, there are some "stories within the story" in this book that are absolutely fantastic.
Like the earlier books, Death's End found its way into my head. Liu definitely knows how to make you think, and about concepts truly astronomical in scale. In a Universe billions and billions of years old, how can our few thousand year old civilization pretend to know anything?
This story will definitely be a sci-fi classic. It is epic in it's scope and really innovative in the storytelling. I loved it, and enjoyed the scientific background, the matter-of-fact tone in which it is written, the constant surprises and the enigmas hidden throughout. It really is about science and technology, but deep inside it is about humanity and who we are, about our concepts of life, time, the universe and infinity. The whole trilogy goes into my list of favourite books ever. Highly recommended!
Although I found many of the ideas in it fascinating, I found it very difficult to get into this series. It may have been partly due to the author's writing style, or cultural differences - but I think primarily it was because I didn't find the characters (especially the central characters of the second and third books) engaging. The few characters I did find interesting and wanted to know more about, were all side characters who had little impact on the plot. I don't regret reading this trilogy, however, and others may well find it much more engaging than I did.
Death's End is a fantastic follow-up to The Dark Forest. The pacing is excellent (improves with every book in the series), the scope of the ideas presented to the reader is staggering.
I will not reveal anything at all about the plot, because this series should be experienced by jumping into the books with a clear slate. In fact, I would recommend to the reader that you should not even read the blurb on any of the books.
My complaint with this book, and the reason I'm rating it as 4-star instead of 5, is that the last ~15% of the book meanders unnecessarily (in my opinion) and takes away from the impact that the book could otherwise have had. It feels like Liu Cixin wants to cram every idea he had but could not weave into the story towards the end of the book, in a faux-tie-up-loose-threads-journey-to-the-shire kind of …
Death's End is a fantastic follow-up to The Dark Forest. The pacing is excellent (improves with every book in the series), the scope of the ideas presented to the reader is staggering.
I will not reveal anything at all about the plot, because this series should be experienced by jumping into the books with a clear slate. In fact, I would recommend to the reader that you should not even read the blurb on any of the books.
My complaint with this book, and the reason I'm rating it as 4-star instead of 5, is that the last ~15% of the book meanders unnecessarily (in my opinion) and takes away from the impact that the book could otherwise have had. It feels like Liu Cixin wants to cram every idea he had but could not weave into the story towards the end of the book, in a faux-tie-up-loose-threads-journey-to-the-shire kind of setup.
Having said that, the first ~85% of the book is excellent and a fitting last book in the series.
Review of "Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #3)" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I don't think I've ever read a more satisfying speculative fiction series than Remembrance of Earth's Past. Yes, the third installment definitely wanders a bit more than the first two, but the overall impact of reading these three books is something I haven't experienced before. How long do I have to wait before I can read them again?