The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

30 Sep 2017

Contains spoilers

I was not remembering clearly how the first book of the trilogy ended - but one thing was clear - a strange alien armada was coming towards Earth to destroy all humanity. And what would humanity do in such a case? Of course give special powers to a couple of great people to think of something to counteract.

The book has its flaws, one of them for me was its sheer size - but the story is well-built as to make it less annoying that I thought.

As expected, the pressure on those selected few made them lose their minds or commit to unexpected actions in order to save a small part of humanity. And again - trying to escape from Earth - which would make at least some sense, was somewhat quickly dismissed as an “escapist” approach.

Again, it is a bit blurry how come the “sophons” which locked scientific advancements couldn’t be analyzed or blocked from their deeds - but some things are left a bit to us to figure out - they were from a superior alien race after all.

The ending is rather unexpected, and way darker and grittier than I would have thought - excellent fiction from start to finish.

One thing some people on the interwebs are complaining is the translation, which for me was unexpectedly good - maybe here and there were some constructs which my poor non-native mind couldn’t keep up with - but overall I found it equally good.