With The Three-Body Problem, English-speaking readers got their first chance to experience the multiple-award-winning and bestselling Three-Body Trilogy by China’s most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Three-Body was released to great acclaim including coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It was also named a finalist for the Nebula Award, making it the first … Award, making it the first translated novel to be nominated for a major SF award since Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities in 1976.
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death’s End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.
Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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This was a long book, but I really appreciate how weird it got at the end. Lots of big ideas that were pretty intriguing.
What a creative, thrilling story — all three of the books, really!
Great series, still thinking about it long after I finished.
Liu Cixin completes his heavy Sci-Fi trilogy with perhaps the most ambitious assemblage of theoretical phenomenon from the realms of quantum physics and cosmology.
I can’t help but take a deep breath thinking about the wildly adventurous situations Cheng Xin and some of the other characters found themselves in during Death’s End. Like the Three-Body Problem and the Dark Forest before it, Liu’s stories stand up based on their epic world-building and hard science background and the situations he’s able to create with the absurdities of the universe and the laws of physics.
Some of the implications are mind-blowing like the 2-D doom device, the movement in 4-D and another dozen highly thought-provoking ideas. You can feel the sense of helplessness that all of humanity must have felt as they dealt with so many possible annihilations.
The problems readers might have with this book are numerous and for those readers who aren’t looking for a hard-science fix they might have issues with this book.
First and foremost, the main character Cheng Xin is flat. We are told many times that she is very beautiful, but there is never much to make us believe in her or understand why she is the lead character other than where she ends up at the end of the book.
I’m still unsure how she easily obtained the position of Swordholder or what her qualifications even were even after rereading that section. Throughout the book, Cheng Xin is important because of that early moment of which we don’t buy in that she could have had.
There are also issues throughout the series with how non-Chinese characters are portrayed. Spoiler–it’s not good.
The main issue readers might take issue with is that the pacing in the story flat-lines at a pretty early point where we aren’t too sure what we are reading toward. It took me much longer to read the second half of the book(though I still enjoyed that half).
4/5 stars
Overall a great finale to the trilogy (edit: another book has been added) but I felt it failed to stick the landing in parts.
A great finale to the trilogy, though a little warning that the SCIENCE in science fiction is much heavier in this one. If you’re not at all up on basics of particle physics, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics etc, this might require some keeping speed. I’ll admit it did for me, but I was able to keep a basic pace and still really enjoy it.
The sheer magnitude of the universe and existence in this book was really humbling, and I found my own thoughts to resemble the author’s in that way. I’ve often pondered the vastness of existence and my place in it all, while trying to refrain from nihilism.
Having said that, I did prefer the middle book The Dark Forest more. That one had more of a character story, but this one has a solid, although bleak ending that I liked.
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This the final part of what should be a science fiction classic trilogy. A story that doesn’t only take place across hundreds or thousands of years, but literally through billions of years.
It offers one of the most wide-eyed views of what humanity’s place in the cosmos might be and how it might evolve once we figure out we are not alone.
Just like the other two books in the series, this book can stand on its own and it is not essential to have read the other books to enjoy it. This, perhaps, might be the greatest compliment and validation of what a masterpiece Liu Cixin has written.
Imaginative, tragic, mind-altering!!!!
The best book in The Remembrance of Earths Past Trilogy. A towering and imaginative exploration of where Humanity can go in the universe. Don’t skip the first 2 books, those are great too and worth the investment to get the full impact of some of the best Science Fiction in a while.