I thought The Three-Body Problem was an outstanding combination of inventive yet still somewhat plausible science fiction, beautiful prose, interesting characters, and at least for me, exotic Asian cultural references. To my delight, I found The Dark Forest to surpass that book in every respect. I don't want to go into too much detail about the plot, even though Liu's writing offers much more than an intriguing plot, because I do recommend these books to anyone who loves good science fiction and I hope others discover them. But I don't think it's giving anything away to say that Liu constructs a vision of the future that is almost entirely original (as is his alien civilization), and the ordeals he puts his relatable characters through are often unexpected, sometimes not so, but always riveting. Like the first book, The Dark Forest gives the reader much to ponder after the cover is closed. Indeed, I will probably have Liu's world on my mind until the third book is released.