I struggled with this one too. I needed the first 200 pages to be like 10 pages. I enjoyed the second half much more. I enjoyed Death's End more so it'll be interesting to see what you think.
Great review! I also had a lot of issues with The Dark Forest. Currently reading Death’s End and it feels miles more cohesive than the first two books. I’m loving it so far.
***Spoilers*** So I agree with you about 50/50. Luo Ji is kind of a creepy a-hole at times. I love the wallfacer/wallbreaker premise, but I always knew when a wallbreaker moment was coming. I didn’t see it as annoying though because I didn’t feel like the other wallfacers were built up enough that I was supposed to care too much. I’m also a sucker for those mystery novels so maybe that’s why it didn’t bother me. We kind of had a sense none of them would succeed anyways because of how worried Trisolaris was about Luo. I do agree that we knew the earth fleet would never succeed, but I didn’t see the entire destruction of the fleet coming from the probe. We knew the main enemy fleet wouldn’t arrive for another 180 years or so at that point, so it was a surprise to me at least that the tiny probe was so destructive. The hibernation technology was a bit of a leap, which really only functioned to get our main characters to the future, so I was okay with that too. In 3-Body they have that VR suit thing that is totally beyond anything we have now. Just have to kind of accept those little liberties taken by the author. The battle of darkness and the dark forest were my favorite parts though. It certainly was “dark” (no pun intended) but also that’s probably how 5 stranded ships in the universe would behave. If they don’t have enough resources for all of them, some would absolutely kill the others. It was a tiny bit of a nitpick that Luo’s plan was basically the exact same as Ray Diaz. That’s slightly annoying, but how it tied in to the dark forest theory was amazing and it showed us why trisolaris was afraid of him all along. I 100000% agree that this book felt like the ending. I finished 3-Body and Dark Forest in about 12 days, but it feels totally wrapped up. I’m 1 chapter into Death’s End, but Dark Forest drained me of everything. It was so dark and heavy, but feels like it had a good ending to the whole story.
Love all the comments and thorough explanations of your thoughts and feelings. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy day to write me! I still haven't started Death's End because honestly, I'm a little scared of it. I'll definitely read it but I'm in the same boat as you. The Dark Forest took everything I had!
Years ago I read the original series but in Chinese in a Chinese language class in college. Currently I am rereading the series in a group but this time in English. A lot of the anti communist government themes have been removed in English surprisingly. Also a lot of sexism against women is not in the first book. The last book is ironically the scariest book of the series especially the end. After the group finishes the last book I think I will read the fourth book. It was not written by the original author but Liu Cixin gave both his blessing and approval to the book. Cixin has said the 4th book is canon even though most fans like to say it’s not.
It's certainly slow to get going, and i also thought this could be the end but JUST YOU WAIT. Regarding the battle of darkness, i think its not that humans just instantly went crazy, it's a small scale Dark Forest , 1. Survival is key 2. Limited Resources. The ships all slowly came to realise this and hence the battle of darkness, instead of going crazy or a critique on humanity i saw it as the mindset of a exclusively space faring civilisation has to look at things in a COMPLETELY different way as you would on earth, hence why he says they're almost not even human anymore because you have to abandon what you know and come up with a new way of survival. The ships became like mini alien civilisations that's ended up following the Dark Forest theory of cosmic sociology. But yh, check out the next book, the ideas are truely mindbending and i found it much harder to predict what was coming, especially after the end of the dark forest felt so final.
I love your enthusiasm and I greatly appreciate the perspective! I am definitely quite interested to see where this is going to go and look forward to a less predictable narrative. Thanks so much for taking the time to watch and comment!
Great review, this one was actually my favorite of the series, I think you may like Deaths End more based on your critisims, although the, I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew does continue into that book as well. I think with all three books, the ideas and concepts take center stage while the characters and plot take a bit of a back seat to them. As for the ending of Dark Forest, I was really pleased with the extortion angle, I think it played well on the premise of the book and the idea of a Dark Forest universe, I feel it plays better than there being another race that comes and helps, putting themselves at risk. That was my reading at least :) Not that a big battle like that wouldn't of been very cool. Can't wait to see what you think of Part 3.
Glad to hear that you loved "The Dark Forest!" That's fabulous 😊 And thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. My fingers are definitely crossed for "Death's End!"
What a great review! It's been a few years since I've read The Dark Forest, but I liked it at least as much as Three Body. I loved the story's progress, but listening to you I definitely agree that some parts of the plot could have been handled much better. I am afraid you might find similar plotholes in Death's End. Still well worth the read for the mind-blowing ideas. Btw, I just watched episode 1 on Netflix, and it's not bad; it shows promise, but its too early to say. Again, fabulous review!
Thank you so much, Bart! Yes, I'm definitely nervous but interested about Death's End. Glad you feel the show has promise. I've heard good things from others 😌
Honestly, that was one of the parts that felt the most unrealistic. Also the idea that one woman could decide the fate of all of humanity because of the era she came from and that she was deamed a "good" person was so farfetched that this whole novel was the most "sci-fi" of them all. As in the most fictional and removed from reality. If I want a strong female main character fighting an alien threat, I'll stick with Commander Shepard.
Alex your book reviews are top notch! And evergreen! I am definitely going to stick to the tv show for this series as well as Shogun as my TBR seems infinite at this time. Are you planning to read the third book? Maybe no rush, sounds like you can use a little Abercrombie before you jump into Death’s End.😀
Hi Heidi! I think you may be the only one who ever refers to me as "evergreen" which is awesome and means a lot. So thank you! I am planning to read Death's End in April after my small break 😅 Wish me luck and have fun with the show!
Great review. I will be watching the TV series soon, which is usually far removed from the books . I sure you already know about the Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) series. You might enjoy that. We recently lost Vernon Vinge so I may start A Fire Upon the Deep. Reading Sprints: You've built a nice community here. Great content.
Thanks so much, Rob! I'm very happy that you are part of my little community 😊 Good luck with A Fire Upon the Deep. I haven't heard of it but hope it's awesome! Please report back when you watch 3 Body Problem as I'd like to know your thoughts!
Problem with this series is that I didnt connect with the character atleast in the first book. Second book first half is good for character development, but at this point I don’t care about them due to me having a bigger interest in the story and science. I’m I going crazy or can somebody else understand me ?
I’ve been watching your book reviews on TH-cam, and I love how insightful and engaging they are. You’ve got a great way of bringing books to life! I’m new to the TH-cam book review scene and don’t have many people around me who are into reading-or who aren’t camera-shy! It can feel a bit awkward doing it solo, so I thought it might be fun and helpful to collaborate with someone experienced like you. Would you be interested in teaming up for a video or two? Even if you’re not up for a collab, any advice you have for a newbie would be awesome. Thanks a lot for considering it!
Hey there @millennialclassics. Sorry just got back to someplace with cell service. Thank you for the compliments on my content. Happy to provide some pointers to you though your platform is significantly larger than mine. I'm also probably not going to tell you anything you don't already know. Begin your videos with an introduction and small intro of the premise of the book. Let viewers know if it will be a spoiler free or spoiler review so they can click off if they wish to still read the story. I sequester my spoiler bits until the end which works for me if I'm doing a spoiler review. Viewers often don't want to know every detail and every thought about a book, but highlighting themes as well as what you did and didn't enjoy are key. If you are doing a brief synopsis without spoilers, aim to keep the video 10 minutes or less. Spoilers can add an additional 5 minutes or so. Good luck to you!
[Spoilers for first third] . . . The only bad thing I have to say about this book was the dream wife plot. Ostensibly it felt kind of like trafficking to me, had some real incel vibes. Although the PDC having her and the child go into hibernation to get him to take his task seriously did help the plot, the entire thing could have been done way better and in a less creepy way. My alternate storyline would be that Luo Ji and a woman working as a cleaner or cook in his mansion fell in love organically. I think there is for sure a pessimistic vibe to his writing, but not really unwelcome. It gives us a differing perspective to humanity, which I believe is the actual main character in the series.
Thanks @gosnooky for that perspective! Glad to hear that I wasn't the only one who found Luo Ji creepy! I like the idea of humanity as a collective being the "main character" since we get so many different people in each book. Da Shi is still my favorite 😊
I skipped the first book because a) I watched the Netflix series, and b) several reviewers commented that the first book is the worst of the three, and that Liu's characterizations are much better in volumes 2 and 3. Like you, I found a lot of the middle going a slog, but things sure picked up toward the end! One thing that did irk throughout is the same thing that bugs me when I read, say, Philip K. Dick stories from the '50's and early '60's - everybody smokes, and the women are mostly ornamental. When I'm reading mid-century American sci-fi I get a laugh from the narrow zeitgeistiness of it all, and I guess similarly that's where early-21st C. China is at, too - but surely we can guess by now how badly all this stuff ages. Anyway, it ended well enough for me to go out and get the third book, and see how that goes. Maybe Luo Ji will get on the patch!
I completely agree with you about the portrayal of women. I get that it's a product of the time for older sci-fi but for something modern...little gross. Glad to hear you liked the TV series. I'm sure I'll get around to watching it eventually!
@@alexfrankfictionit is pretty radically different from the book, with characters being eliminated, amalgamated, gender/race swapped, etc. But I suppose the bare bones of the plot remain. I figured I could pick right up with the book 2 and figure it out - and ultimately I could - but trying to ascribe TV to book characters was just too much for too little reward, and I gave up, largely.
Alex, thanks v for another well-considered review. I found TDF difficult to finish, frankly, due to the writing and sadly disruptive plot holes. The solution seems far too simple - the technology of the Trisol could easily nullify it. This made the solution seem silly rather than amazing. The too remarkable leaps in science and technology on erath also seemed like a lazy way to solve the problems presented in the first book. I look forward to your review of the next one. Thanks again. B
Thanks for the thoughts, B! Nice to know I'm not the only one who had issues with the story as a whole compared to the first one. Make me sad, frankly. I have my fingers crossed for "Death's End" but won't lie, I'm quite nervous about it. Entirely possible that this will go from a series I wanted to recommend to people after reading the first book to one I steer readers away from. We shall see. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
I struggled with this one too. I needed the first 200 pages to be like 10 pages. I enjoyed the second half much more.
I enjoyed Death's End more so it'll be interesting to see what you think.
My fingers are crossed 🤞👽😄
Great review! I also had a lot of issues with The Dark Forest. Currently reading Death’s End and it feels miles more cohesive than the first two books. I’m loving it so far.
That's wonderful to hear! Thank you for sharing as that gives me hope 😊🍻
Took a couple chapters, but I think it got there!
***Spoilers***
So I agree with you about 50/50.
Luo Ji is kind of a creepy a-hole at times.
I love the wallfacer/wallbreaker premise, but I always knew when a wallbreaker moment was coming. I didn’t see it as annoying though because I didn’t feel like the other wallfacers were built up enough that I was supposed to care too much. I’m also a sucker for those mystery novels so maybe that’s why it didn’t bother me. We kind of had a sense none of them would succeed anyways because of how worried Trisolaris was about Luo.
I do agree that we knew the earth fleet would never succeed, but I didn’t see the entire destruction of the fleet coming from the probe. We knew the main enemy fleet wouldn’t arrive for another 180 years or so at that point, so it was a surprise to me at least that the tiny probe was so destructive.
The hibernation technology was a bit of a leap, which really only functioned to get our main characters to the future, so I was okay with that too. In 3-Body they have that VR suit thing that is totally beyond anything we have now. Just have to kind of accept those little liberties taken by the author.
The battle of darkness and the dark forest were my favorite parts though. It certainly was “dark” (no pun intended) but also that’s probably how 5 stranded ships in the universe would behave. If they don’t have enough resources for all of them, some would absolutely kill the others.
It was a tiny bit of a nitpick that Luo’s plan was basically the exact same as Ray Diaz. That’s slightly annoying, but how it tied in to the dark forest theory was amazing and it showed us why trisolaris was afraid of him all along.
I 100000% agree that this book felt like the ending. I finished 3-Body and Dark Forest in about 12 days, but it feels totally wrapped up. I’m 1 chapter into Death’s End, but Dark Forest drained me of everything. It was so dark and heavy, but feels like it had a good ending to the whole story.
Love all the comments and thorough explanations of your thoughts and feelings. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy day to write me! I still haven't started Death's End because honestly, I'm a little scared of it. I'll definitely read it but I'm in the same boat as you. The Dark Forest took everything I had!
Years ago I read the original series but in Chinese in a Chinese language class in college.
Currently I am rereading the series in a group but this time in English. A lot of the anti communist government themes have been removed in English surprisingly. Also a lot of sexism against women is not in the first book.
The last book is ironically the scariest book of the series especially the end. After the group finishes the last book I think I will read the fourth book. It was not written by the original author but Liu Cixin gave both his blessing and approval to the book. Cixin has said the 4th book is canon even though most fans like to say it’s not.
It's certainly slow to get going, and i also thought this could be the end but JUST YOU WAIT.
Regarding the battle of darkness, i think its not that humans just instantly went crazy, it's a small scale Dark Forest , 1. Survival is key 2. Limited Resources. The ships all slowly came to realise this and hence the battle of darkness, instead of going crazy or a critique on humanity i saw it as the mindset of a exclusively space faring civilisation has to look at things in a COMPLETELY different way as you would on earth, hence why he says they're almost not even human anymore because you have to abandon what you know and come up with a new way of survival. The ships became like mini alien civilisations that's ended up following the Dark Forest theory of cosmic sociology.
But yh, check out the next book, the ideas are truely mindbending and i found it much harder to predict what was coming, especially after the end of the dark forest felt so final.
I love your enthusiasm and I greatly appreciate the perspective! I am definitely quite interested to see where this is going to go and look forward to a less predictable narrative. Thanks so much for taking the time to watch and comment!
Great review, this one was actually my favorite of the series, I think you may like Deaths End more based on your critisims, although the, I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew does continue into that book as well. I think with all three books, the ideas and concepts take center stage while the characters and plot take a bit of a back seat to them.
As for the ending of Dark Forest, I was really pleased with the extortion angle, I think it played well on the premise of the book and the idea of a Dark Forest universe, I feel it plays better than there being another race that comes and helps, putting themselves at risk. That was my reading at least :) Not that a big battle like that wouldn't of been very cool.
Can't wait to see what you think of Part 3.
Glad to hear that you loved "The Dark Forest!" That's fabulous 😊 And thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. My fingers are definitely crossed for "Death's End!"
What a great review! It's been a few years since I've read The Dark Forest, but I liked it at least as much as Three Body. I loved the story's progress, but listening to you I definitely agree that some parts of the plot could have been handled much better. I am afraid you might find similar plotholes in Death's End. Still well worth the read for the mind-blowing ideas.
Btw, I just watched episode 1 on Netflix, and it's not bad; it shows promise, but its too early to say. Again, fabulous review!
Thank you so much, Bart! Yes, I'm definitely nervous but interested about Death's End.
Glad you feel the show has promise. I've heard good things from others 😌
How do you feel about the immasculinity of humanity and its consequences? (As of "Death's end")
Honestly, that was one of the parts that felt the most unrealistic. Also the idea that one woman could decide the fate of all of humanity because of the era she came from and that she was deamed a "good" person was so farfetched that this whole novel was the most "sci-fi" of them all. As in the most fictional and removed from reality. If I want a strong female main character fighting an alien threat, I'll stick with Commander Shepard.
Alex your book reviews are top notch! And evergreen! I am definitely going to stick to the tv show for this series as well as Shogun as my TBR seems infinite at this time.
Are you planning to read the third book? Maybe no rush, sounds like you can use a little Abercrombie before you jump into Death’s End.😀
Hi Heidi! I think you may be the only one who ever refers to me as "evergreen" which is awesome and means a lot. So thank you!
I am planning to read Death's End in April after my small break 😅 Wish me luck and have fun with the show!
Great review. I will be watching the TV series soon, which is usually far removed from the books .
I sure you already know about the Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) series. You might enjoy that.
We recently lost Vernon Vinge so I may start A Fire Upon the Deep.
Reading Sprints: You've built a nice community here.
Great content.
Thanks so much, Rob! I'm very happy that you are part of my little community 😊
Good luck with A Fire Upon the Deep. I haven't heard of it but hope it's awesome!
Please report back when you watch 3 Body Problem as I'd like to know your thoughts!
@@alexfrankfiction Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all-time favorites, hope you enjoy it as well. @tetsujin-28
Problem with this series is that I didnt connect with the character atleast in the first book. Second book first half is good for character development, but at this point I don’t care about them due to me having a bigger interest in the story and science. I’m I going crazy or can somebody else understand me ?
Hi Eduardo, you're not crazy. Cixin Liu was not focused on character development which is why they are so flat. Very old school sci-fi writing style.
Muting at 30secs because iso want to read this series. But leaving you on for the watch time 😊
Thank you, Jessica! That was very kind of you
I’ve been watching your book reviews on TH-cam, and I love how insightful and engaging they are. You’ve got a great way of bringing books to life!
I’m new to the TH-cam book review scene and don’t have many people around me who are into reading-or who aren’t camera-shy! It can feel a bit awkward doing it solo, so I thought it might be fun and helpful to collaborate with someone experienced like you.
Would you be interested in teaming up for a video or two? Even if you’re not up for a collab, any advice you have for a newbie would be awesome.
Thanks a lot for considering it!
Hey there @millennialclassics. Sorry just got back to someplace with cell service. Thank you for the compliments on my content. Happy to provide some pointers to you though your platform is significantly larger than mine.
I'm also probably not going to tell you anything you don't already know. Begin your videos with an introduction and small intro of the premise of the book. Let viewers know if it will be a spoiler free or spoiler review so they can click off if they wish to still read the story. I sequester my spoiler bits until the end which works for me if I'm doing a spoiler review.
Viewers often don't want to know every detail and every thought about a book, but highlighting themes as well as what you did and didn't enjoy are key.
If you are doing a brief synopsis without spoilers, aim to keep the video 10 minutes or less. Spoilers can add an additional 5 minutes or so. Good luck to you!
[Spoilers for first third]
.
.
.
The only bad thing I have to say about this book was the dream wife plot. Ostensibly it felt kind of like trafficking to me, had some real incel vibes. Although the PDC having her and the child go into hibernation to get him to take his task seriously did help the plot, the entire thing could have been done way better and in a less creepy way. My alternate storyline would be that Luo Ji and a woman working as a cleaner or cook in his mansion fell in love organically.
I think there is for sure a pessimistic vibe to his writing, but not really unwelcome. It gives us a differing perspective to humanity, which I believe is the actual main character in the series.
Thanks @gosnooky for that perspective! Glad to hear that I wasn't the only one who found Luo Ji creepy! I like the idea of humanity as a collective being the "main character" since we get so many different people in each book. Da Shi is still my favorite 😊
I skipped the first book because a) I watched the Netflix series, and b) several reviewers commented that the first book is the worst of the three, and that Liu's characterizations are much better in volumes 2 and 3. Like you, I found a lot of the middle going a slog, but things sure picked up toward the end! One thing that did irk throughout is the same thing that bugs me when I read, say, Philip K. Dick stories from the '50's and early '60's - everybody smokes, and the women are mostly ornamental. When I'm reading mid-century American sci-fi I get a laugh from the narrow zeitgeistiness of it all, and I guess similarly that's where early-21st C. China is at, too - but surely we can guess by now how badly all this stuff ages. Anyway, it ended well enough for me to go out and get the third book, and see how that goes. Maybe Luo Ji will get on the patch!
I completely agree with you about the portrayal of women. I get that it's a product of the time for older sci-fi but for something modern...little gross. Glad to hear you liked the TV series. I'm sure I'll get around to watching it eventually!
@@alexfrankfictionit is pretty radically different from the book, with characters being eliminated, amalgamated, gender/race swapped, etc. But I suppose the bare bones of the plot remain. I figured I could pick right up with the book 2 and figure it out - and ultimately I could - but trying to ascribe TV to book characters was just too much for too little reward, and I gave up, largely.
@@girthbloodstool339 I don't blame you as I think I would have hated trying to figure that out 🤣
Alex, thanks v for another well-considered review. I found TDF difficult to finish, frankly, due to the writing and sadly disruptive plot holes.
The solution seems far too simple - the technology of the Trisol could easily nullify it. This made the solution seem silly rather than amazing.
The too remarkable leaps in science and technology on erath also seemed like a lazy way to solve the problems presented in the first book.
I look forward to your review of the next one.
Thanks again.
B
Thanks for the thoughts, B! Nice to know I'm not the only one who had issues with the story as a whole compared to the first one. Make me sad, frankly.
I have my fingers crossed for "Death's End" but won't lie, I'm quite nervous about it. Entirely possible that this will go from a series I wanted to recommend to people after reading the first book to one I steer readers away from. We shall see.
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
You are correct. I just don’t give a damn about spoilers lol😂
And you, my man, like to live dangerously. I respect that