Final book of the trilogy, which I have enjoyed but found to be a bit plodding in book 3.
We ended book 2 with an explanation of that book's title, The Dark Forest, and what it means: that in the universe all civilizations are focused first on survival, and because they can't know what lurks among the stars (in the metaphorical dark forest) and whether it might be dangerous to them, the rational thing for a civilization to do is just destroy any sign of another emerging civilization before the other guys come for them. Luo Ji's understanding of this concept allowed him to threaten the Trisolarians with mutually assured destruction through broadcasting their existence and location if the Trisolarians tried to exterminate the human race. This understanding bought them some time of relative peace and prosperity, as long as Luo Ji, the "Swordholder", maintained the ability and will to carry through his threat.

Book 3 focuses on Cheng Xin, a scientist and kind-hearted soul who is selected to be the Swordholder as Luo Ji is aging out. But when she takes over, the Trisolarians immediately challenge her, having correctly predicted that she lacked the will to broadcast their location and act. The Trisolarians destroy the devices that would broadcast their position, and start preparing the Earth for their conquest with some genocidal actions (leaving a few million humans in Australia, on the way to killing everyone else).

Their plan is sort of foiled eventually, but not before a pretty severe culling of humanity. The rest of the book follows Cheng Xin living with her guilt over not acting (well deserved I would say). Then we get lots of time jumps and very long-winded explanations of humanity's plans to survive a likely Dark Forest strike. Cheng Xin keeps hibernating and returnging, so she is at the center of it throughout the years.

WARNING: I'm going to spoil the ending now.

After 500 pages of humanity's struggles to survive the coming strike... we don't survive it!! Liu's vision is pretty damn bleak. Basically, he starts with the sociological assumption of the Dark Forest, that rather than explore and reach out to other civilizations we would just destroy them. I don't buy that- humans (and probably aliens too) are too curious to just destroy without exploring. But this assumption leads Liu to a consistent conclusion- Dark Forest thinking will eventually destroy the universe, as rational actors will alter the laws of physics to kill other civilizations, lest they be killed themselves.

This book spends way too many pages on lengthy explication of these concepts. The author's grasp of science is impressive (to this non-scientist anyway), and it seems like he was determined to lay out his quantum physics speculation along with his sociological speculation. I think he could have abbreviated much of it. And as in the past books, the characters are all one-dimensional, secondary to the physics and the sociology. I'm glad I finished the trilogy, but I wouldn't dive into anything else by this author. ( )

The third and last book of the trilogy, and my favorite one. The previous two books had some flaws, compensated by their originality, high density of ideas and "sense of wonder". This one goes beyond: It's much more ambitious, making the previous two seem small in scope by comparison. In that sense, it reminded me of Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon, also a huge and awe-inspiring book.

In this book, there is quite a lot of exposition, either directly, with short chapters written in the form of a future history book, or through dialog between characters. All this is generally frowned-upon, and some readers may dislike it, but here I loved all of it. Truly a fascinating, ambitious and deeply-affecting science fiction epic.

This trilogy is one of the defining works of modern SF. ( )

To some extent, there's no valid rating for this book aside from 5. If you've come this far, then you won't be disappointed with this book, because it achieves something that is by all rights impossible: a succinct and tidy ending to a series whose scale is quite literally the universe, and whose level of detail extends well beyond the limits of human science.

That said, unlike other books in this series, it was clear when things were beyond the realm of possible, even in the sense of being not "internally consistent" with previously described features of this world (in previous books, the scale of science was "closer" to human science, and so to a non-hard-scientist like me, it wasn't easy to discern things that were "obviously impossible," though I have no doubts that a scientist may find a few holes in previous novels. Probably no more than they find in published papers!). It doesn't matter, though, because I have no better suggestion for how to tell the story, or how to explain anything. The scope is simply too large.

Easily one of the best series I've ever read, and without a doubt a pillar of science fiction for years to come. Compared to previous science fiction classics - Dune (not actual sci fi but people claim it is), Childhood's End, Foundation, Ender's Game, and every other book on this list that I've read https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_classics_of_sf.asp and likely almost all that I have not read - the scope and breadth of the science fiction setting of this novel is so dramatically large that it's not possible not to be impressed.

I'm not sure I'd want to live in Liu's world, but I'm awestruck by it. ( )

Nunca me deja de sorprender la cantidad de ideas y la velocidad con la que pasa de una a otra de Liu Cixin. Esta claramente es la novela más "grande" de las tres. No sólo por su tamaño literal (es un librote) sino por cuanto abarca en tiempo y espacio. Cuando pensas que va a detenerse en algo, salta 2 siglos, y despues pensas que un clímax está llegando, y ¡oh! se detiene durante 3 capítulos a contarte cuentos de hadas con mensajes ocultos. De esta manera te mantiene siempre adivinando hacia donde va la historia. En los dos libros anteriores tuve la sensación de que los personajes realmente no importaban, lo que importa de verdad son las ideas. Y aquí sigue esa misma línea, pero si que hay un esfuerzo mayor en hilar la historia en torno a Cheng Xin, la protagonista (una mujer!).
En fin, que pese a lo esquemático de sus personajes y lo expositivo de la narración, no pude dejar de leer este libro que hablaba del destino de toda la raza humana y su lugar en el universo, desolador y lleno de esperanza a la vez.
Y mirá, si me lei 800 páginas en menos de dos semanas, para mi son 5 estrellas que queres que te diga. ( )

Very disappointing end to an otherwise strong series. Cixin Liu's writing style left this book (like the previous two to a much greater extent) longer than necessary. Unlike books one and two, Death's End didn't have the strong story behind it to make that forgivable - the plot here serves for Liu to string together philosophical treatise and half-baked science against the backdrop of a society that grows scientifically while, against all odds, stagnating socially.

The MC, Cheng, was frustratingly mopey who should never have been in a position of power and despite consistently proving she wasn't up to the task was continually asked to make decisions regarding humanities fate. On top of that, every time she makes a poor decision she decides to put herself in cryo-sleep (or whatever Liu calls it) so others have to deal with the fallout. Appropriately, I guess, the MC does seem to be a stand-in here for the entire human race who throughout this book makes the wrong decisions repeatedly. So I guess in that regard she was a great choice as the Sword Holder.

Moving on from the MC - the dimensional fuckery was, ridiculous and where I started to really drag on this book. I read fantasy and science fiction happily but thanks to the 4th dimensional discussions this book swung wildly from side to side across the plausibility resulting in a book that couldn't decide if it wanted to be science fiction or science fantasy...and apparently I don't do well with that. I'm willing to accept additional dimensions beyond 3 T but I need more explanation than "4th dimension bubbles go pop".

Finally, or maybe a revisit to my complaints about the MC/humanities decision making capabilities, it seemed like the last quarter of this book was just Liu adding on a bit of hope and jerking it away...repeatedly. Into the last pages when due to a light tomb the MC and her always estranged would-be lover manage to get separated by 18 million years. ( )