This is a vast and fascinating book - the third in an engaging, far-reaching trilogy by the greatest Chinese sci-fi writer, Liu Cixin. I will try to review it without spoiling anything for those who haven't yet had the pleasure, although the title rather gives away the inevitable ending.
Across his Three Body Trilogy, Liu Cixin has offered a story of earth-versus-trisolaris, and later, in the second book, this scope is expanded with the dark forest philosophy to a chaotic, over-crowded universe of every-civilization-for-itself. In this final book, the seeds that were long ago planted have now come to be fully grown plants. It has been an incredible journey.
Yet Death's End (or The Birth of Death, as its Chinese title goes), is far grander in scope than the previous two novels, which now seem rather dull and uneventful by comparison. In the first book, which was probably the conventional best of the series, Liu took us back to the Cultural Revolution, and how the cruelty of humanity essential brought upon its own downfall. In the second, we saw how humans dealt with the inevitability of death from the cosmos, reeling in the knowledge that we were not alone, and suddenly rather tiny and fragile.
The third book in the trilogy spans tens of millions of years. Its protagonist takes advantage of hibernation technology to travel through time, visiting all of the most important moments in earth's history since "the Common Era" (ie what readers know as now). This is Cheng Xin, a woman who for some reason is constantly tasked with saving the world, and who constantly makes poor decisions. She is a quite likable character, but rather weak - perhaps believable but perhaps a little too "girly". I get the distinct impression that Liu is trying to make a strong female character but it is clear he really doesn't understand women very well. Through all his books, the women are rather poorly written.
In fact, that's this novel's greatest downfall - as with the previous two. Liu is obviously a great mind and he can theorize incredible happenings in the universe. His ideas are spectacular and he describes them pretty well... yet, he seems to struggle with humans. He's better at talking about the technology required to travel at the speed of light or destroy a galaxy than he is at putting two people together and having them talk. So be it. This is sci-fi after all.
Another downfall - and this may be the translator's fault - is that the metaphors liberally employed throughout are rather obviously stated. This occurs first in a strange opening scene, where a puddle is drying on a floor. We are twice informed that this is a metaphor for a dying civilization. Any writer worth his salt knows not to deliberately state that a metaphor is a metaphor.
Granted, this is a translation from Chinese to English. There are certain cultural quirks to understand, and certain translation issues. Stating the obvious and repeating the obvious is not considered a bad thing in Chinese, so maybe that caused this little issue. Anyway, this translation is superior to those of the previous two novels. It is also interesting to see the future from a Chinese perspective, as China may actually have far more of a role in the future history of the earth than Hollywood and Western novels like to suggest. Liu envisages a world where people speak a hybrid of Chinese and English, and where a rather large percentage of the clever folk have Chinese names... Not too give too much away, but by the end of the book it's really only Chinese characters who have anything to do with anything. The non-Chinese characters mostly avoid stereotypes but often speak in odd, clunky ways that are not really believable.
Regardless of its faults, this was a long, long, long trilogy which held my attention and entertained me throughout. I probably enjoyed the first book the most, and the second disappointed me quite a bit, but the third was a gripping story with an absurdly large number of events unfolding over tens of millions of years. I'm absolutely not a fan of science fiction, yet this managed to entertain me immensely, and I highly recommend it.
Across his Three Body Trilogy, Liu Cixin has offered a story of earth-versus-trisolaris, and later, in the second book, this scope is expanded with the dark forest philosophy to a chaotic, over-crowded universe of every-civilization-for-itself. In this final book, the seeds that were long ago planted have now come to be fully grown plants. It has been an incredible journey.
Yet Death's End (or The Birth of Death, as its Chinese title goes), is far grander in scope than the previous two novels, which now seem rather dull and uneventful by comparison. In the first book, which was probably the conventional best of the series, Liu took us back to the Cultural Revolution, and how the cruelty of humanity essential brought upon its own downfall. In the second, we saw how humans dealt with the inevitability of death from the cosmos, reeling in the knowledge that we were not alone, and suddenly rather tiny and fragile.
The third book in the trilogy spans tens of millions of years. Its protagonist takes advantage of hibernation technology to travel through time, visiting all of the most important moments in earth's history since "the Common Era" (ie what readers know as now). This is Cheng Xin, a woman who for some reason is constantly tasked with saving the world, and who constantly makes poor decisions. She is a quite likable character, but rather weak - perhaps believable but perhaps a little too "girly". I get the distinct impression that Liu is trying to make a strong female character but it is clear he really doesn't understand women very well. Through all his books, the women are rather poorly written.
In fact, that's this novel's greatest downfall - as with the previous two. Liu is obviously a great mind and he can theorize incredible happenings in the universe. His ideas are spectacular and he describes them pretty well... yet, he seems to struggle with humans. He's better at talking about the technology required to travel at the speed of light or destroy a galaxy than he is at putting two people together and having them talk. So be it. This is sci-fi after all.
Another downfall - and this may be the translator's fault - is that the metaphors liberally employed throughout are rather obviously stated. This occurs first in a strange opening scene, where a puddle is drying on a floor. We are twice informed that this is a metaphor for a dying civilization. Any writer worth his salt knows not to deliberately state that a metaphor is a metaphor.
Granted, this is a translation from Chinese to English. There are certain cultural quirks to understand, and certain translation issues. Stating the obvious and repeating the obvious is not considered a bad thing in Chinese, so maybe that caused this little issue. Anyway, this translation is superior to those of the previous two novels. It is also interesting to see the future from a Chinese perspective, as China may actually have far more of a role in the future history of the earth than Hollywood and Western novels like to suggest. Liu envisages a world where people speak a hybrid of Chinese and English, and where a rather large percentage of the clever folk have Chinese names... Not too give too much away, but by the end of the book it's really only Chinese characters who have anything to do with anything. The non-Chinese characters mostly avoid stereotypes but often speak in odd, clunky ways that are not really believable.
Regardless of its faults, this was a long, long, long trilogy which held my attention and entertained me throughout. I probably enjoyed the first book the most, and the second disappointed me quite a bit, but the third was a gripping story with an absurdly large number of events unfolding over tens of millions of years. I'm absolutely not a fan of science fiction, yet this managed to entertain me immensely, and I highly recommend it.
