Supernova Era

3.5 stars for me.

The premise is nice (end of the world as we know it) and I loved the entire first half of the book: the ramp up and preparation for the new era, the first challenges the new leaders encounter, how it devolves and evolves. It then shifts focus from China to the US and it's still interesting to some extend to see the parallels in development. However for me that's where the book starts breaking apart.

The remaining half of the book is a heavy-handed summary of stereotypes about China, US, Europe, Japan, interspersed with the actual plot (or the actual development of the “what ifs”). The resolution does not seem to be very well developed. The key idea at the end of the book is indeed a nice “what if”, but it does not seem to be extremely well executed in terms of narration. Add to that a megaton of loose ends (whatever happened to the AI?) and it feels like at some point Liu Cixin (or his editors?) got bored and decided to cut the book short. The Epilogue redeems things a bit by providing a slightly more distant analysis of things (and is quite humorous to boot).

Overall the book feels like a great initial idea with a very good setup, some not very nuanced developments and a weak ending. Still a good read if you like to explore where a society might go if something goes very wrong.