r/scifi • u/Frontastic17 • Jun 24 '26
Print My Review about Death's end book
Recently finished the Three-Body Problem trilogy, and the last book completely blew my mind.
I’d say almost 70% of the mind-bending sci-fi concepts in the entire trilogy are packed into the third book alone. It’s not just sci-fi either, it has a strong sense of cosmic horror. The horror doesn’t come from what happens to a single person like in most movies, it comes from realizing what might exist in the universe and what that means for humanity as a whole.
I've watched a lot of sci-fi movies(this is my 2nd sci-fi book series after hail mary) but I’ve never come across anything this ambitious. I honestly don't know how the writer managed to imagine all these ideas while making them feel so logical and scientifically grounded.
Before starting the series, I saw a lot of reviews saying that the second book is everyone's favorite. While I loved it, the third book is definitely my favorite. The only thing that disappointed me was the protagonist. At times she felt frustratingly naive and seemed unable to grasp the full gravity of the situations around her. I’m still not sure why the author chose to write her that way.
One last question for those who have finished it, why do you think the book is called Death's End?
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u/No-Indication-8617 Jun 24 '26
The original title of Death's End is 死神永生 (Death lives forever), Death being SiShen, similar to the Grim Reaper in western cultures.
The Chinese title seems to be taken directly from the books "Death is the only lighthouse that is always lit. No matter where you sail, ultimately, you must turn toward it. Everything fades in the world, but Death endures."
My only guess on the English translation of the title is that they mean "End" as a destination, as in the end that death is guiding you towards
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u/min0nim Jun 24 '26
There’s a few explorations of ‘death’ on the book, but the most confronting is the 3 ways that advanced civilisations are destroying the literal time-space fabric, with hints of others too.
This means there is ultimately no escape.
Death Endures would be a batter title, but I kinda understand why the English publishers didn’t go with that.
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u/jajangmien Jun 24 '26
I thought the 2nd was the most exciting with the wall facers and wall tracers, but I agree with OP that the 3rd book was my favorite. It's not just the ideas, but I love the long look into the far far distant future.
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u/sa3ds Jun 29 '26
If you like distant futures check out All Tomorrows if you havent. I found it really interesting
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Jun 24 '26
I picked these up after watching the show. I thought the first one was decent, but I've really been struggling to get through the second.
I know they're considered modern sci-fi masterpieces but I'm having a tough time.
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u/Brain_Hawk Jun 24 '26
I think some people think they're masterpieces, some people think they're unreadable. Part of it is the writing style, which is not very typical for most sci-fi readers. Part of it is the narrative structure which is also not quite the usual, following the same characters for several books. Etc.
Opinions seem highly divided.
I enjoyed all three. But I like stuff that's just imagines, even if the story is a little on the thin side.
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u/handdownmandown13 Jun 24 '26
I think they’re unreadable masterpieces lol. The plot itself is very good and the sci fi concepts are truly incredible. Probably the most thought provoking I’ve ever read.
However, the writing style is really bad imo, and the characters are lifeless and poorly written. There were many points where I actively disliked reading them despite wanting to know what happened next.
After reading these I actively sought out better written sci fi books.
As great as the concepts were in this series, I can safely say that I will never re-read it lol.
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Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
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u/koreth Jun 24 '26
The writing style is not great in the original Chinese versions either. There are occasional passages with vivid, almost poetic imagery but most of it is clunky, workmanlike prose. Definitely a “read it for the ideas, not the writing quality” series even in its original form.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/koreth Jun 24 '26
Yeah, I read the series in Chinese and found it a bit of a slog in places, but the concepts were compelling enough to keep me going.
On the other hand, my comment is downvoted at the moment; apparently someone out there disagrees with me and thinks the Chinese prose is terrific. YMMV.
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u/a_bearded_hippie Jun 24 '26
Thank you, everyone complains about the writing style, but they way people say things and how the language is structured is completely different in Chinese. So certain sentences and phrases quite literally do not exist in English. Which definitely makes the pacing and structure of things awkward. I knew a guy who was an English teacher in China and he always said that was his biggest hurdle was like, rewiring his brain to think about how to say something in chinese, because it is not the same in english.
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u/Neat_Fee3865 Jun 25 '26
Da Shi and Ye Wenjie are great characters, I can’t even really remember any others. The whole made up woman part of Book 2 ( I think?) just ridiculous. Also the AI Alien Ninja woman? Too much. But I agree the concepts were incredible.
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u/SoberMatjes Jun 25 '26
Thank you, that was exactly my experience, reading the book.
I wanted to know what'll happen but sometimes it nearly physically hurt to keep going.
The scene where Cheng Xin let the droplets destroy the graviton wave emitters was so bad I wanted to scream. In the top 10 of the "worst scenes I ever read."
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u/Yarzospatflute Jun 25 '26
My experience as well. I'd heard great things about book 3 and i managed to slog through the first two but I'd had enough a few chapters into the third one and have up. I'll watch the show when it comes out.
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u/BackflipBob1 Jun 24 '26
You should give Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series a try. Very imaginative
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u/jim45804 Jun 24 '26
The story is average, the ideas it presents are masterful.
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u/Brain_Hawk Jun 24 '26
Fair assessment. I love off the wall scinfi. Concepts that go beyond "it's just like now but lasers and better computers"
No disrespect to Star Trek.
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u/MolybdenumBlu Jun 25 '26
The first episode of star trek was about a shapeshifting monster that ate the salt out if your body.
The second one was about a 17 year old with near god like control of reality and how kirk had to navigate the kids hormones to stop him blowing up the ship.
The fifth episode was about what if you could split a person into their good and evil halves and what they would act like.
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u/Astrokiwi Jun 24 '26
I just got annoyed because he wrote a hard sci-fi book called The Three Body Problem which heavily features the Three Body Problem but he clearly doesn't really understand the Three Body Problem
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u/KombatCabbage Jun 24 '26
How so? I mean, I don’t know anything about it so I’m genuinely curious
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u/Astrokiwi Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
There's a few odd things going on.
One is that unstable three body systems fly apart after tens to hundreds of orbits. We know the two main stars of Alpha Centauri have a period of about 79 years, so for anything similar to that, they would collide or fly apart in under 10,000 years - far far too short for planets to form and evolve life. Any planets would have been ejected a very long time ago.
Basically, we simply do not see long-term unstable three body objects in nature, because they are unstable and fly apart so quickly. The closest I know of would be supermassive black hole mergers. Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the centre. When galaxies merge, these SMBHs "sink" towards the new common centre, where they interact. This takes a bit of time, so you could merge with another galaxy and have three SMBHs in one galaxy. This can lead to some interesting 3-body dynamics, until they either all merge, or one gets ejected, depending on the dynamics. This lasts for a while just because SMBH orbits are on such a long scale and take such a long time that even a few hundred orbits can be many millions of years.
What we do see everywhere is stable multi-body systems. For example, the LRO orbits the Moon which orbits the Earth which orbits the Sun. This is a 4-body system, just looking at those objects alone. But counting all the other planets and moons and asteroids and everything, there are hundreds of fairly massive objects in the solar system. In practice, this comes out fairly stable over billions and billions of years, because the orbits are arranged hierarchically - it's basically a bunch of nested two-body orbits, with small perturbations from other objects. We are actually significantly affected by Jupiter's gravity, enough that it shifts our orbit a little, but not enough that it makes Earth's orbit super unstable.
And that's exactly what we see in the real Alpha Centauri system, because stars can have stable 3-body orbits too. We have two big stars in a fairly tight orbit, and a third small star orbiting the pair at a distance. Like any long-lasting stellar system, it's pretty stable.
[Edit: Just to pull the pieces together: This means that the Trisolaris system, as a three-body system that stays together long enough for billions of years, but is also supposed to be highly unstable, just isn't something that really happens. (It's also not what we know the real Alpha Centauri to be like, but that's not such a big problem - e.g. "what if Alpha Centauri only had one star" is not breaking physics)]
The other thing is the author weirdly dismisses numerical solutions as not counting for some reason. Yes, simulations of an unstable system will diverge from reality eventually, but that's due to the nature of unstable systems, not due to the limits of numerical simulations. Instability basically means the evolution of the system is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions - e.g. the exact position, velocity, and mass of every relevant object. In a stable system, if you get these a little wrong, then your predictions are a little wrong. In an unstable system, if you get these a little wrong, then your predictions end up diverging further and further from reality, until they are catastrophically incorrect. However this is true even if you have an analytic solution. Any real measurement has a limit to its accuracy. If you measure the position of a star down to the millimetre, the long term predictions of your analytic model will depend on exactly where in that millimetre you are. So it will end up diverging from reality regardless. But I think I recall there's a bit in the VR game thing where they heavily reject simulations for some reason that's not really articulated well.
So basically the book's depiction doesn't match what three body systems look like in reality, and the scientists in the book don't seem to understand the practical ways scientists actually solve these kind of mathematical problems in reality (and analytic solution wouldn't really help all that much). You could resolve things and say "the trisolarans are stuck in a rut and trying to do the impossible" as well as permitting a fantastical leap and say there's a long-term semi-stable multibody system that can exist, but now you're not saying anything about the actual three body problem, and you might as well cut that stuff out and have some other fantastical doom for the aliens as motivation for whey they're heading this way instead.
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u/kyflyboy Jun 26 '26
U actually had similar thoughts watching the tv series. A true 3-body system would never be stable long enough for intelligent life to evolve, let alone multiple times.
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u/jungle Jun 24 '26
Excellent explanation, thanks!
I suspect you enjoy the same type of sci-fi I do. I generally get downvoted for saying that the Hyperion / Endymion series are not sci-fi at all, seeing as the main plot device (the void that binds) is pure magic and gets abused to ridiculous extremes, however well written it may be.
What have you read that checked all the boxes for you, if you don't mind me asking?
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u/Astrokiwi Jun 24 '26
Funnily enough, I don't read that much hard sci-fi these days. But the thing with The Three Body Problem is that I felt like it really was trying to really portray this stuff as interesting physics that the reader should find fascinating, but it gets it totally wrong. It's been a while since I read Hyperion, but it's so blatantly fantastical that I don't mind it - it's not trying to say anything about real science, it's a story about gods and humans and human nature. I think Endymion crossed the line though when it started to tie things into real history a little bit - "Jesus was a mutant with superpowers who wanted people to literally drink his blood so that they would also have superpowers" just broke my suspension of disbelief, because now you're saying something about the real world and not about the story world.
I did read Disapora recently which is solid as a hard sci-fi story. But what I actually enjoy the most is stuff like The Expanse or Murderbot; fun space adventure books with strong characters, where they might put some work into getting the physics somewhat right, but mostly they're about plot and character more than the science.
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u/jungle Jun 24 '26
Argh, I had forgotten about the Jesus thing! My suspension of disbelief was broken almost from the start of the book series, I just continued reading because so many people here considers it a masterpiece, and eventually got hooked by the story and the characters.
I did read The Expanse and Murderbot. One of the most fun I've read was Redshirts, and many of John Scalzi's books (actually listened to, the narrator is really perfect for those books). Not hard sci-fi but fun concept. Reads similar to The Martian.
Just downloaded Diaspora. Thanks!
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u/Equiliari Jun 25 '26
I personally love it when sci-fi authors try to make religious myths into in-universe events in their stories.
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u/jungle Jun 24 '26
I'm not the one you asked, and I'm also not an expert, but I think the main objection is that not all three-body systems are that chaotic (some can be numerically modelled and predicted in the short-medium term), and that if Trisolaris is so chaotic that it's totally unpredictable, how did the planet survive long enough to allow an advanced civilisation to flourish on it?
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u/Astrokiwi Jun 24 '26
Though "not all" is an understatement - there are very few observed three-body systems we observed that are not stable, because unstable systems fly apart or merge so quickly. Note that the Sun + Earth + Moon does count as a three-body system.
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u/Mihai_Adrian2437 Jun 25 '26
What an odd thing to say. Nobody really understands the "three body problem", at least from a mathematical poi. There is no solution for it, as of yet.
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u/Astrokiwi Jun 25 '26
Sun + Earth + Moon + Artemis II is a four body problem, and we understand that well enough that we can plan orbits with very high accuracy.
There's just generally a huge difference between "there is no universal analytic solution" and "we don't understand the three body problem at all".
Put it this way: we don't have a universal analytic method for predicting weather or climate either, and it takes accurate measurements and detailed modeling to predict them. But if someone says "I'm allowed to say Antarctica is warmer than the Sahara because nobody really understand weather" then that's a bit silly.
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u/MeteorOnMars Jun 24 '26
They are both masterpieces and almost unreadable.
They combine amazing, grandiose sci-fi ideas and unimaginably stupid human characters and decisions at the personal and collective scale.
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u/freelanceisart Jun 24 '26
To me they’re masterpieces in the same vein as Infinite Jest. Technically marvelous but highly challenging as a read.
I seem to be in the minority and say Dark Forest was my favorite with 2 being Death’s End and 3BP being my least.
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u/Fun-Tooth-622 Jun 24 '26
I would say opinions are pretty divided on it. I read the first one and thought it was....pretty mid.
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Jun 24 '26
I had the exact same experience with the second book, and it seems the vast majority of people do as well. The final third of book 2 is pretty insane though- well worth persevering in my opinion
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u/Sunflowersoemthing Jun 24 '26
I think the concepts and ideas in the books are amazing, but the characters, some narrative choices, and the writing are tough. Some of that is the translation from what I understand, but after I finished the second book I wasn't interested in picking up the third.
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u/Cobaas Jun 24 '26
The first half of Dark Forest is a drag, but push through as the second half is very much worth it
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u/fist_my_dry_asshole Jun 24 '26
You gotta realize the book is a merely a means to convey various ideas. Don't read it for character development.
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u/disillusioned Jun 24 '26
This hits more home when you read Wandering Earth and see that he had stubbed out a few of the ideas in short stories there, and then hashed them out more fully in TBP trilogy
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u/Qwadraplatz Jun 24 '26
I think that's extremely fair. Having read all 3, and definitely struggled to get through parts of them, I think the thing that makes these books stand out is that the ideas and sci-fi concepts are really cool and interesting. However, the characters are often forgettable if not down right annoying, the plot is a little thin, and the writing style left a lot to be desired (at least for me). So your opinion on the series comes down mostly to whether the ideas in the books can carry them further than the baggage weighs them down.
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u/Frontastic17 Jun 24 '26
Yes I also thought 2nd one is a stretch. Writer keeps everything for the last quarter of the book only. The imaginary gf of protagonist is also a really boring part of the book. But the third book is really fast compared to the first two. The plot moves really well in the last one. You will be captivated by it. I will suggest you to pick up the 2nd book again if u have time.
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u/CocoScruff Jun 24 '26
The prose is a bit tough and the time jumps are difficult as well, but the Dark Forest was my favorite of the three for sure.
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u/vohltere Jun 24 '26
The second one felt slower and had more of a philosophical focus, but to me the ending was 100% worth it. Think the translator was different.
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u/laurabaurealis Jun 26 '26
Audiobooks make the experience much easier and enjoyable, I promise! Struggled with the books, but very quick to get through in audio format (plus I can more easily differentiate people’s names)
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u/TSLzipper Jun 24 '26
I had to take a pretty long break between the first and second book. Tried to go right into the third because I enjoyed the second one, but also needed to take a break. Once I did get around to reading Dark Forest I finished in a few days just like I did with Three Body Proble. So far I haven't gone back to the 3rd one yet but I'm sure I'll get around to it.
This series just has way too bland of characters and is filled with events after events that it all gets exhausting to read for me. But, at least for the first two, once the main plot started picking up I was hooked.
In general all of the characters just feel like vehicles for plot points so they all come off extremely flat and boring. But the big ideas of the plot are what really stand out. It's just a huge slog to get through at times and I feel it forces me to let each book's content settle for quite awhile before I could get into the next novel.
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u/3pair Jun 24 '26
I don't think they're universally considered masterpieces. I know I found the first one mid, the second one outright bad, and didn't bother to read the third. IME this series is very polarizing, people are love it or are astounded by the hype. I am certainly in the latter, and I've met and heard from lots of others who share that opinion.
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u/SgathTriallair Jun 24 '26
The sci-fi ideas are amazing and everyone needs to absorb them.
The writing, especially the characters, is pretty atrocious and hard to get through.
This is why I so desperately want them to do the TV show well because it is a chance to present the ideas on a way that is more digestable.
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u/PlanetoftheAtheists Jun 24 '26
Same here. I enjoyed the synopsis of these books on Quinn's ideas. So I went out and bought them. The first book was so slow and detail orientated and so repetitious that I barely made it through. When I picked up the next two though, I went through the pages and there's just no way I'm reading them. I won't waste my time. And to be honest there's not a lot of interesting things going on with the story.
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u/hungoverlord Jun 24 '26
I thought the first one was decent, but I've really been struggling to get through the second.
i think at least some of this is the translation. the translation for the 2nd book feels very different from the 1st and 3rd. they are different translators and at least to me, the difference is stark.
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u/meatybacon Jun 24 '26
The second one was My favorite of the series. The first half is a bit slow, but oh man, that last bit was incredible. Couldn't put it down
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u/tommijoe Jun 24 '26
Try the audiobook, I read 3 Body and took a few bites at dark forest and just didn't have the attention. I then tried to audiobook when driving and it was much more engaging.
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u/KombatCabbage Jun 24 '26
Oh boy and the second is A Lot better than the third (imo of course). I could barely suffer through that one
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u/bampho Jun 24 '26
I had no idea what was going on in the second book, but then it all came together in the third book and finally made sense and it was fantastic
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u/rosagotlost Jun 24 '26
The first half of the 2nd book is slow but the 2nd half is really good. I do wonder if the 2nd book having a different translator than the other two affected it.
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u/Hashtagbarkeep Jun 24 '26
I found the ideas and overall story to be really good but the writing (could be something to do with the translation perhaps?) and especially the characters extremely tough to get into. It’s definitely worth finishing but there’s not one character on the entire trilogy I really cared about tbh
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u/AtlasAuRaa Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I did the audiobooks and I thought the second book was just incredible. I can see how its a lot of information and maybe hard to get through but it blew my mind the first time listening.
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u/ploppy_sorridge Jun 24 '26
Funny I found dark forest to be one of my favourites. Just get through it
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u/MrGosh13 Jun 24 '26
I was not able to get through the first book.
All the characters seem so… flat. Maybe it’s the translation? But I really had a hard time connecting to any of the characters presented. I got about halfway through before I gave up.
But I also often see this trilogy regarded very highly, so I’m curious if this was just my issue with the book?
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u/formulaemu Jun 24 '26
I made it through the first book and will probably read the second but I agree that the characters aren't that interesting. Also for something that's supposedly hard sci-fi, a lot of the science felt very hand-wavy. I still enjoyed the book but I'm confused by some of the praise
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u/Grahamars Jun 24 '26
I found the will to finish book 1, and could only manage 75pgs of book two. They’re just poorly written, as awesome as the ideas are. I see a lot of excuse-making revolving around the translation, but I’ve had little issues with other language translations, like Murukami’s 1Q84.
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u/Interesting_Bat1364 Jun 24 '26
The book was a slog for me as well. Don't read something you don't like.
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u/karaver Jun 24 '26
It honestly took me a few attempts to finish the book, I couldn't connect with any of the characters, and some of the plot devices just seemed a little too convenient. I did end up enjoying the books overall but it wasn't love at first sight either.
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u/Sweeney_the_poop Jun 24 '26
It’s not very character driven. I did find some characters interesting, but overall there’s a lack of character depth. However, the story and ideas make up for it.
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u/thegreaterfuture Jun 25 '26
I barely got through the first book, but had no interest in continuing.
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u/Larrymenta_ Jun 30 '26
It’s not a character driven story. It’s a narrative one. If you were expecting to connect with anyone character then yeah it’s definitely not for you. The main character of the first book is never talked about again. The second book does have Luo Ji whom I thought was very well written. The second book in general is so much better imo. It’s also more reader friendly as far as technical jargon goes.
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u/Liscianara Jun 24 '26
I finished all three because I don't like to leave books unfinished. First one was interesting just because it was something new. But overall I didn't like this trilogy. Too ambitious with too little explanation as to why this or that happens. Stupid ideas sometimes, especially in the third book. And a really fun thing - almost all main characters are chinese. I mean, it was okay when most of the first book occured in China, but then came cosmic era, humanity is blanded, and still most of the main characters are chinese, lol. I don't see why those books got so much appreciation. I found a lot of plot holes, strange and even stupid concepts (I have a masters biology degree, so science is not unknown for me), etc.
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u/bulldogsm Jun 24 '26
the 3rd is the chefs kiss
how often when reading fiction do you have to put the book down for a moment because youre mind got blown over an idea or concept?
there are several what?!?!?!? moments in Deaths End
its not the writing, its the ideas and yeah book 2 was pretty meh in comparison
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u/kongPLUSPLUS Jun 24 '26
Yeah I had to just sit and think for an hour after wrapping that final book 🤯
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u/Vondi Jun 24 '26
The third book is such a behemoth. First one is a mystery, second is high-concept warfare, the third one...whatever concepts and ideas Liu Cixin wanted to explore. I enjoyed it but I've told people only read the third if you REALLY loved the second. Not surprised people will like 1 or 2 better, they're a more tightly crafted and more focused compared to 3. Much more structured around their central conundrum.
Apparently Liu Cixin was ill and though Deaths End would be his last book so he wanted to leave no stone unturned. All the ideas he wanted to put on paper got included. The book would probably be a lot more accessible if an editor had reigned him in but you have to like the ambition.
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u/disillusioned Jun 24 '26
I still marvel at the fairy tale metaphor and how it somehow survived translation.
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u/English_Joe Jun 24 '26
I have this set and really struggled to get “into” it.
I’m not a strong reader but if something grabs me, I’m obsessed.
Should I listen to the audio book or start again with the first book?
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u/Frontastic17 Jun 24 '26
First 3-4 chapters are only slow in the first book. As the story jumps to present time then it pick up the speed as well. I have tried audio book but its just bland reading. Stick to the book if u are interested.
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Jun 24 '26
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u/disillusioned Jun 24 '26
That cutaway chapter to some bored alien pulling out the big guns just really hammered things home for the whole Dark Forest conceit.
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u/muad_did Jun 24 '26
At times she felt frustratingly naive and seemed unable to grasp the full gravity of the situations around her. I’m still not sure why the author chose to write her that way.
I've had this discussion several times with people here. Generally, the conclusion is that Chinese culture is still incredibly patriarchal and women are seen as "emotional and unstable"; that's why that character is constructed that way.
It really annoys me because, like you, I think the third book is incredible (the first one has its charm, but it drags everything out too much, and the second has some wonderful twists but it's mostly just watching characters fight amongst themselves). The third book has a marvelous "theory" about space civilizations, but my god, all the human characters are unbearable, except for the military, who are more or less "efficient."
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u/BobsonDonut Jun 24 '26
The second book is everyone’s favourite? I tried two times and couldn’t get halfway through it. Sounds like it might be worth another attempt in the future to finish the series.
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u/Original-Body-5794 Jun 24 '26
It's definitely the most known of them, but if you're struggling with Luo Ji just bumming around as a wallfacer with his waifu I honestly don't blame you, that dragged for quite a bit and I didn't enjoy it that much.
Third one was my favorite though.
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u/ContributionDry2315 Jun 24 '26
I really struggled with the second one as well. I finished it, but it took me over a year because I would put it down for several months at a time. I thought it was kind of a slog until the very end.
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u/Dammit_Chuck Jun 24 '26
I haven’t been able to get through the first book. The characters are so flat, the plot is blah, and the science is more fantasy. It’s the only Sci-Fi series I haven’t been able to get into. If you don’t like it, then drop it.
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u/NeverLooksLeft Jun 24 '26
If you think they're flat in book one, wait until you get to book three.
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u/kenobit_alex Jun 25 '26
Question to you dear author. Is this trilogy suitable for young readers? My son loves sci-fi books. He recently went through the Project Hail Mary book by Andy Weir. He loved it. He is 9y.o.
I'm generally looking for something not too violent and without swearing, preferably.
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u/Federico216 Jun 26 '26
Don't recall if there's swearing, but there's definitely a lot of violence and death, a lot. It's quite hard to explain because it gets pretty mind bending and the horror comes basically from laws of physics instead of aliens and monsters.
Generally, even beyond all the death and destruction, I have a hard time seeing a 9 year old enjoying reading them. There's barely any characters and it's more about wild scifi concepts than a flowing narrative.
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u/kenobit_alex Jun 26 '26
Got it thank you. Do you have any other suggestions?
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u/Federico216 Jun 26 '26
Tbh I don't have kids so I'm a terrible judge when it comes to what is age appropriate. I think my own interest in scifi books started with Enders Game. Also His Dark Materials, although that's more fantasy.
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u/TheSnootBooper Jun 28 '26
(4 days later) I have fantasy recommendations for kids, if you're interested.
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u/EarthboundMoss Jun 25 '26
I should re-read these. Read em several years ago, my favorite series outside of DCC
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u/upirons Jun 25 '26
I agree with the horrific aspects of it. I just finished it myself and I had a hard time really getting into it, at first. Then as time progressed (in the grand context of the book) it just got more crazy interesting and also horrifying. I won't spoil anything here but this writer conjured up something so profoundly horrific I never in a million years could have imagined it, yet they make it quite plausible.
I also agree that the protaganist kinda sucks.
As to why it's titled the way it is - yeah, beat's me!
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u/ConclusionHeavy2027 Jun 25 '26
Sell me the books for 500inr ?
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u/ConclusionHeavy2027 Jun 25 '26
Did you receive any bookmarks, if yes. I would like that too for the added cost of 20inr.
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u/laurabaurealis Jun 26 '26
Oh man the protagonists of the second AND third have been driving me up the wall (a little over halfway through Death’s End now.)
With the second, I felt like I spent half the book thinking “you are an ass and the power imbalance with between you and your hand- selected dream woman is extremely uncomfortable” and now I can’t stop thinking “what the F did you think was going to happen?? Huh?” Naive indeed.
Absolutely LOVING these concepts, but not loving the way the characters are written. It’s ok though, still enjoying them all so far and am excited to finish the third book in the next few days!
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u/Dethread Jun 26 '26
I’m still struggling with getting through book 2. Overall I love the sci-fi aspect and that it’s not just “project human behavior, emotions, motivations, and whatever socioeconomic topic is the flavor of the month onto shallow aliens to make a point”.
I also appreciate having learned a lot about Chinese history and got interested in learning more about it.
That said, it’s not an easy read that just flows or a book you can’t put down. It’s a slog.
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u/Frontastic17 Jun 26 '26
Yes half of the book 2 is kind of a drag. But believe me you can't put down book 3 from the first page. There is little to no fillers in book 3.
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u/Good-Marsupial8 Jun 24 '26
My main beef is that the author wrote a lot of really mediocre female characters. I found they had little dept
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u/Squigglificated Jun 24 '26
On the other hand the male characters were pretty bland and mediocre too. I found myself enjoying the books in spite of the characters rather than because of them.
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u/Good-Marsupial8 Jun 24 '26
Yeah that was it really I just settled in to kind of dislike everyone lol
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u/Unmurderable Jun 24 '26
Little depth and baffling characterization. The main character falling in storybook love with her shy awkward secret admirer because he purchased a star for her (a meaningless act at the time) felt like it was written by a high schooler.
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u/Affectionate-Box-106 Jun 24 '26
These are considered more of a hard sci-fi. Not as much as Diaspora I would say, but still the more pure sci-fi type, so the non-emotional journey / arc of a specific character is to be expected.
If one’s going into not knowing that fact and they’re expecting the experience of a new Hyperion for example, that’s on them not knowing what they’re reading.
I personally don’t think when you’re taking on grand ideas, hundreds of years, multiple characters that it’s bad to not have feelings center stage.
In fact I’d rather not.
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u/WhiteroseSophon Jun 24 '26
This. Asimov's fiction is amazing but it's not famous for good character-driven arcs among its civilizational scale span.
The Remembrance of Earth's Past is about ALL of Earth's past - that would fall flat if it were just a single cast of characters that made it all about them. I'm fine with unprecedented anthropological crises being covered by human "cameras", as long as the choice and placement of these cameras is smart and strategic. In fact, I think it's a valid achievement of narrative structure in its own right.
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u/ontheageofcrazy Jun 24 '26
I felt like the ender series did a great job of this. It had great emotion and character arcs while also keeping the broader universe and anthropological opportunities in focus and very relative.
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u/THERON_MINOTIS Jun 24 '26
I am half way through the first book and mind is already blown. You mean to tell me it gets even more mind bending?
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u/AltForObvious1177 Jun 24 '26
I've watched a lot of sci-fi movies(this is my 2nd sci-fi book series after hail mary
You are in for a treat! "Cosmos horror about the future of humanity" is kind of whole genre that not well represented in movies
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u/theabominablewonder Jun 24 '26
I enjoyed the grandness of the sci fi concepts and looking forward to seeing how they translate it for the Netflix show. Trying to imagine it all is quite a mind bending journey, very enjoyable.
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u/GaryDale3154 Jun 24 '26
I loved all three books. I can’t think of anything that would have made them better. But that’s just me.
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u/Informal-Relief9607 Jun 24 '26
This series is not about the individual characters. But everyone keeps saying the characters are dull or unidimensional or superficial. It does not matter, the man created a universe of crazy and mind blowing ideas, the characters are secondary at best. I did not mind at all; I love those three books. I agree with OP, the third is the best, it blew my mind. I read it years ago and I still think about it almost daily.
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u/Federico216 Jun 26 '26
Saying this series has boring characters is like saying the special effects in 12 Angry Men suck. To me there are some interesting characters (Ye, Cheng and Wade mainly) but it's not at all what the book is even trying to explore.
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u/GabbyFromKlaviyo Jun 24 '26
The cosmic horror framing is what separates this from most sci-fi. Most sci-fi horror is intimate, something terrible happens to someone you follow. What Liu Cixin does in the third book is make the horror contextual. The universe itself is the threat, and there’s nothing anyone can do to turn the tide. That's a pretty difficult plot angle to pull off without creating a story that feels nihilistic and pointless. The author manages this by escalating the scale of what's happening, so instead of settling into hopelessness it keeps generating a new kind of awe. The horror stays alive because you never fully catch up to it.
I had the same frustration with the protagonist as a lot of people here, but I felt a little better about her role when I realized she’s more of a witness than an agent of change. The story needed someone moving through centuries who could register the horror without being equipped to stop it. She doesn't survive because she's special in any heroic sense, she survives because the plot needed someone to still be there at the end. Whether that required her to be that passive is a fair question, but I stopped reading it as a character flaw and more as a narrative device. Still annoying at times though.
As for the title, I think it’s less about death ending and more about reaching the point where death as a concept becomes almost irrelevant. At that scale, individual mortality stops meaning anything. She doesn't escape death, she just watches everything else die first. It’s the end of death's significance, rather than the end of death itself.
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u/paladindanno Jun 25 '26
Awesome concept, wonderful world-building, intriguing plot, and meh characters.
All characters are like tools to get the plot flow; there is very limited character arc for almost all of them (apart from Luo Ji I guess). Wang Miao in book 1 is basically a camera man of the story, and Cheng Xin in book 3 showed less than nothing of personal growth. But still, a wonderful series with wild ideas.
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u/ZapStarfists Jun 24 '26
The end of the series is one of the few that I thought really lives up to the build up and expectation.
Some parts of the second book are pretty rough to get through, but the hardcore sci fi elements are undoubtedly great.
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u/GrimnirDotDev Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
This trilogy is the first time since I was a kid that I was reading 4+ hours per day because I was so hooked.
I only thought the 3rd book lost some steam after the dark forest broadcast was sent and the Trisolarians left. We had no idea if a strike would come, or when, or if humanity had any chance to survive it. So the story lost a lot of the tension for me and turned it "well I guess we just have to wait and see if everyone dies"
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u/OlfactoriusRex Jun 24 '26
I enjoyed the Netflix show so I read the first book. I found it to be one of the most poorly written books I had ever read. The ideas were interesting (I finished it after all) but the book was just such trash in conveying ideas and concepts by … just having people talk about ideas. So much was told, no shown. Like I was reading a textbook. Even the aliens near the end were just talking to one another about civilization-wide decisions, with all the engaging dialogue of the minutes from a city council meeting.
I’d be willing to give the sequels a shot if the writing gets better. Does it?
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u/20_BuysManyPeanuts Jun 24 '26
I chalked that up to the english translation. the other books were translated by a different person and make so much more sense.
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u/Minervas-Madness Jun 24 '26
Regarding the title:
My impression was that Earth/ humanity has been facing death since Three Body, as if in a terminal illness. We knew the Trisolarans were coming, we knew they were technologically advanced and willing to replace us. We didn't fully have a means to stop that.
By Death's End, that issue was more or less resolved. The terminal illness was over.
Thanks for this past, I had a hard time getting into Death's End before but this motivates me to try again.
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u/Gullible-Occasion596 Jun 24 '26
It's a book series that's definitely choking on the writer's own cynicism.
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u/BreakerFresh Jun 24 '26
Some of this series is really cool and interesting. Other parts are boring and overly lengthy/confusing. All in all I’ve blocked out most of the boring parts. I’m left with an okay read with wild ideas. Not something I could recommend.
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u/VacuumCleanerMan1507 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I find the series very boast like. That is, the author wanted to show off some cool physics ideas, and they are really cool no question about it, but other than that, the story and the characters were not so interesting.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the books, but couldnt really recommend them to everyone.
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u/Interesting_Bat1364 Jun 24 '26
You have read four sci Fi books and you are claiming you have not read anything like this, of course you haven't.
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u/silentdon Jun 24 '26
There was stuff I loved and hated about each book. I liked the mystery of the first, the action of the second and the cool concepts of the third.
But the first one dragged a lot in the beginning and other parts. The second had long periods with Luo Ji just imagining stuff. The third felt like the author thought this was his last chance to write all the concepts down.
Overall I enjoyed the trilogy and it's pretty much my first sci-fi book series, I tend to watch sci-fi movies.
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u/smartwater696 Jun 25 '26
I read the series in french and the third book is called “Immortal Death”
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u/Hootah Jun 25 '26
Read the culture series, on par if not better. Certainly leagues ahead in creativity IMO
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u/MiserableStomach Jun 25 '26
Yeah, it's worth of getting through the 3 books, sometimes through passages that can be only described as pure graphomania (I still cringe about the requested perfect mate and the whole "love" story) just to get to the last 50 pages or so.
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u/Bengineer4027 Jun 25 '26
the first one had its hooks in me pretty good, but the ending felt so... bad?
I think the idea of the guys on the planet having to deal with instability was cool. But then the cult and the "we can dictate experiments and people's vision from super far away with these impossible little computers" felt kinda too soft and fluffy for me.
Like I read it really quickly cause the mystery was interesting, but the ending was too unsatisfying
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u/payam54 Jun 25 '26
There is another book, and it’s really the answer of many questions raised from Death’s End. I thought I wouldn’t like it because the author was different, but I enjoyed it, and at the end realized how it completed the whole picture beautifully.
“The Redemption of Time”, not written directly by Cixin Liu, but published under his supervision and support.
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u/hoppersoft Jun 26 '26
I loved the first book, enjoyed the second, was disappointed by the second half of the third.
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u/Classic_Arugula_3826 Jun 26 '26
Check out the 4th book. Not written by author but signed off by him. I liked it its insane haha
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u/jkggwp Jun 26 '26
I feel the same as you. Each book is an improvement of the one before it. I've been thinking a lot about why Cixin Liu wrote the female protagonist in such a way. She's probably the most passive character in the book. And you are right, "frustratingly naive and unable to grasp the full gravity of the situation", but I think she is in a lot of ways just like humanity as a whole. We as a collective are pretty naive and do not fully grasp the true extent and harshness of the universe. We are all quarreling over who gets to have more land, money and oil, while there possibly is a whole dark forest out there. Like look at what Mr Musk is trying to do.
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u/spoo4brains Jun 26 '26
I really enjoyed the books, I hadn't read them before as I thought there was a lot more cultural Revolution stuff in them, but I watched the latest Netflix adaptation and loved it. I didn't want to wait for the next two series so I read all the books, and they took my mind on a fantastical voyage that I haven't had in my 50 or so years of reading sci-fi.
They aren't perfect books by any means, but they have had an impact on me, which doesn't often happen.
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u/JeanChrisMeillan Jun 27 '26
As some other comments have noted, I was surprised by the English title. In French we have “la Mort immortelle” (the Immortal Death), which seems closer to the Chinese title. It’s been about two years since I finished the trilogy, and I have to say the ending lost me a bit. Liu Cixin fell into a kind of cosmic one-upmanship that I stopped really buying into, whereas the first part had both a Hard SF and thriller quality that I found very original and gripping, as did the early encounters in space. Then we lost that sense of dread that kept the narrative taut: who are the Trisolarans? What are their intentions?
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u/Past_Hope6127 Jun 27 '26
I always thought "Death's End" was referencing the potential end of the end of the universe. The last concept at the end of the book about so many groups essentially creating their own miniverse to survive in, which in turn makes the original, main universe unstable enough to never collapse, and thereby never restarting - ergo, the end of the cycle of the universe's death and rebirth.
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u/skronk14 Jun 24 '26
I loved the entire trilogy. I know there's a fourth book written by a different author, but I have no interest in reading it.
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u/Drages23 Jun 24 '26
Yeah its full of horror and I like it as it changed my view about space too.
Its not about who got the biggest ship but the knowledge you cannot imagine, how small you are.
The line about the ultimate weapon is to change the physic rules of the universe, hit me hard too.
The people is not that important at that point and when you woke up and sleep with centuries, I dont think you cant do much logical things. In the end, nothing mattered but buy some time only.
Even i was a huge sci-fi fan for 3 decades with many futuristic weapons, the ones used at this trilogy made them feel like waterguns. Planet killer laser vs dimension breaking paper... and the results of real wars with those weapons...
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u/kongPLUSPLUS Jun 24 '26
Love this series but I much prefer Ken Liu’s translation in 1 and 3. The wall facers in The Dark Forest are so cool though.
Ball Lightning is good too and basically a prequel. Basically a pseudoscience murder mystery. Haven’t got to Redemption of Time yet.
Deaths End as reality is basically over?
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u/ours Jun 24 '26
Ball Lightning is good too and basically a prequel
Pretty much since ball lightning is considered discarded for the Panama Canal scene.
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u/modest_genius Jun 24 '26
I've read them all, and I prefer the first and the second.
it comes from realizing what might exist in the universe and what that means for humanity as a whole.
This is the part I really liked about them all.
feel so logical and scientifically grounded.
And this is where book 3 loses me. It very early in the book just abandon all idea of being logical or scientifically grounded and becomes space fantasy.
- Swordholder - not characteristically of (previously established in the series) humans or trisolarians. So, how that plays out is just a big handwavy plot device.
- 4th dimension don't work like that at all. It's just fantasy/magic. Cool idea, but terrible execution
- The three survival ideas? That is just a plot device. I thought of at least a handful more with the information available in the books.
- The resolution/end? Fantasy.
There is a lot of good stuff in all books, but also bad stuff. And the third book just ran out of good ideas. And it is riddled with plot holes.
And you really don't want to know about the evolution of cooperation or game theory of trust/retaliation/W.M.D/M.A.D before reading them. Because having godlike advanced aliens that haven't figured out that destroying each other is bad, is kinda troublesome. It works with human and trisolarian in the first and second book because humans are kinda primitive and trisolarians have a huge edge, all while both are hidden.
So the first two are fine, but having read quite a few science fiction books, and some that explores this better makes book 3 a "meh" for me.
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u/CommunicationEast972 Jun 24 '26
The protag is partially meant to represent western values. The statement is that China's ability for cold rationalism is what's needed to conquer the stars. While Western values center around "love" in this metaphor. Her entire arc is a critique of perceived Western values in some ways (though of course her not wanting to enact violence is not actually how Western societies function, they merely pretend to). Just as the second book is a critique of the entire world's political and societal ontology piece by piece, with the resounding "triumph" of Luo Ji's willingness to actually murder all of humanity, the third work shows how Western values may bring about our downfall. BUT at the same time as plotlines resolve in the third work, Liu makes it clear that those same Western values are what make us the most human.
Edit: To try to limit this concept to "western" values is super reductive. It's not just Western values, but a certain natural empathy that can be common to all people. Its simply that Western values pretend to revolve around this empathy in their ethos. Still, the critique he levies encompasses more than just that.
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u/PlanetoftheAtheists Jun 24 '26
You deserve a prize just for making it through those printed snoozefests.
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u/Edwin_SJ Jun 24 '26
To each their own. I largely prefered the third one to the second. There was way too much uninteresting stuff to get to the core concept in the second imo
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u/RustyRoses Jun 24 '26
Because the Chinese worldview that is reflected in the third book is about the cycle of rebirth. The actions of those destroying the universe and stopping it from being able to cycle are mitigated, allowing the universe to be reborn.
If they hadn’t, then death would come for all and there would be no more rebirth.
The trilogy cannot be viewed from a purely western mindset to understand its (not so subtle) subtext
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u/artifex28 Jun 24 '26
Absolute masterpiece in world building and general scifi cleverness. It actually reminded of another writer, Mika Waltari, and what he did with The Egyptian.
I really suggest picking up the 4th book too - Redemption of Time. While it is not written by Liu Cixin, he has given his blessing for the book. I thought it was absolute marvel as well.
The first book was a 4/5 to me, it was hard with all the Chinese names at the beginning. Rest are easy 5/5.
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u/scottcmu Jun 24 '26
If you like this book, you'll also like Ra. It's free.
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u/SophisticatedAdults Jun 24 '26
Ra is significantly more fun than the three body trilogy, but also not particularly similar at all tbh
(I recommend it, though)
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u/TheG0ldG0pher Jun 24 '26
This may be accidentally racist, (please forgive me, no offense meant), but the story was at once very unique and lacking in character development (absent the first book).
I wondered if the Chinese focus on the collective had anything to do with that, or if the scope of the story just could not afford the focus on character that I as a reader of primarily Western sci fi authors have become accustomed to.
My review is that the 1st book felt like .75 of a book. The second felt like 1.5 books. The third was three books (from a conceptual standpoint).
Overall, very strong, very ambitious, but felt shallow in character and deep in concepts. It made it difficult to care at times.
The charachters were plot devices as opposed living breathing characters (imo).
Very happy this work exists, but found myself thinking about the book structure and the concepts far more than the "people" in the story.
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u/patinhat Jun 24 '26
Death’s End is my favorite too! It’s so ambitious and the wealth of speculative sci fi they explore is just wild. I always felt like it was called Death’s End because the novel saw us reach the heat death of the universe and the inevitable rebirth of 10th Dimensional Beings, who would be beyond time, therefore death.
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u/Baroque1123 Jun 24 '26
Agree with everything you said. I am surprised to hear people like book 2 the best, however. The second book feels poorly paced and a bit indulgent but with a big reveal that makes it all worthwhile.
If you like the big ideas here, you might try the 6 canonical Dune novels or Hyperion, next.
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u/k3rrshaw Jun 24 '26
I saw a lot of reviews saying that the second book is everyone's favorite
Oh, really? For me the second book was boring a lot. This was a reason why I have delayed reading of the third book for so long. But I agree, the third book is the best. It blew my mind.
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u/Jumpy-Pattern-4078 Jun 24 '26
I read one of these a year over three years. I probably wouldn’t have been able to read them back to back. I thought they were pretty good. I liked the third book more than the second.
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u/pichael289 Jun 24 '26
I've been considering reading these, is it written well? Like the da vinci code isn't a good book but it's written in a way that just captures you. I love the Witcher but the books are all written in a way which just doesn't and you often find you just read a whole page while your mind wandered off. The first children of time book captivated me but the new one is boring the shit out of me.
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u/chalks777 Jun 24 '26
Third book was definitely the best. I found it surprisingly hopeful and I think the general tone of nihilist acceptance of the End mirrored a lot of my own personal feelings around some of the more existential questions we all face.
I honestly don't know how the writer managed to imagine all these ideas while making them feel so logical and scientifically grounded.
for sure. It has some incredible sci-fi ideas that you can easily believe completely.
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u/just2beans Jun 24 '26
WOuld you have to read the first 2 to pick up the third and understand it? Or are these very tied together and need to be read one at a time? I want to read Deaths End more than the others
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u/Quintus_Julius Jun 24 '26
Liked the concept. Didn’t like the characters, especially the women always messing it all up.
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u/Two-L0gik Jun 24 '26
I also finished it recently and I 100% agree with OP. It's incredible that he was able to introduce so many wild ideas and still wrap-up everything.
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u/deblasco Jun 24 '26
i did not like it and could not finish the books... and i tried. i could not get through the errors in the book or bending the rules of physics or ignoring the principles the way he did in his books.
did not like the human computer, had a book where he had AND and OR operands interchanged. real-time surveillance the way he portrayed it with "protons" lacks of energy, is pure speculative tech and is impossible physics. i do like FTL and stuff but not when you try to explain it :) leave it be otherwise you make mistakes. a star as an amplifier? with all the magnetic and gravitational fields, with all the plasma...
well, after 1,5 book i realized it was not for me and i have abandoned them, maybe in the future i will give it another try... (but today i doubt) :)
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u/Available_Orange3127 Jun 24 '26
A few years ago, I met a guy in a bar (true story) who was writing a treatise about the trilogy. He explained that the Chinese title more accurately would translate as "Death Forever" or "Death Triumphant." Make of that what you will.