The Dark Forest

The second part of The Three-Body Problem.

For the most part the plot feels slow and mystical, very similar to some classic sci-fi—like Foundation and Childhood’s End—where you and some characters don’t know what’s going on or going to happen next. Or it’s just you and the author doesn’t reveal some character’s plans. Also there are some unique—to me—alien features, which has a big impact on their communication with humans and perception of the world.

The intro (the first third) is kinda slow and I’m like "where are the aliens or some cool sci-fi stuff?", cause mostly it’s just discovering how ordinary human lives may change in that kind of alien situation. And then, as always, after the intro the plot accelerates to the first cosmic velocity. We also get some time jumps here, the last of which for me is very captivating.

Then there’s that action episode on the 80% mark… It’s just shocking.

And then it’s very devastating and depressing because The Dark Forest finally gets explained to you. But the ending suddenly becomes hopeful during the last 5 pages. Which leaves you with a lot of questions about the next book’s potential story.

Overall it’s a realistic, grounded and even scary science fiction story. Can’t wait to read the conclusion!

If you have never come across the Fermi paradox then this book has a fantastic way to explain one of its solution. The dark forest hypothesis.

I consider this one of those slow but great books in speculative fiction. Much better than the previous one in my opinion due solely to its sheer scale.

The aliens found in the previous book, called Trisolarans, are coming and will reach the planet in roughly in 400 years. They become substantially dangerous as they are able to send subatomic particles that allows them instant knowledge of all human information, leaving us with barely anything to protect us as everything we can think of is already known by them and therefore end up sabotaged. The only thing they cannot know is what is inside peoples mind.

How do humans deal with Trisolarans with just that is the main plot of the book .

There are too many things here that are utterly insane. Reading the book for the first time was quite an experience. If you like mind bending ideas, plot twist, don't care much about the characters and are fascinated by old school Sci Fi, then this book is a must read.

I am gobbledy smacked screaming crying throwing up, this book slaps you in all the unexpected ways that real life does.

Surprisingly this book is very different to the first in its series, but absolutely not in a bad way. It's grown organically to adapt to the new setting - given that the twist in the first book completely alters the fundamental environment that the book is set in, and yet somehow manages to slap in an equally mindbending revelation in this book. I've gushed loads in my review of the first book about how real the writing is, and I think that really excels in this book as well. I'm still marvelling at how well the sense of nothing you thought mattered matters anymore after 200 years of 'time travel', yet it's not even mentioned explicitly. Dude, like, I feel like I time travelled. also loved the not-so-subtle calls to classic Chinese sci-fi that I read growing up, very fun :)).

A note that I did read the original in Chinese, and while I thought the translation of the first book was kinda difficult to read, I had a quick peek at the tranlation of this second book, and actually thought it seemed pretty fab (and I don't often say that about translated works from Chinese ahaha. I know it's difficult to produce a translation that makes a native speaker happy!).

No frickin clue where the third book is going to go, from a quick look at the contents page, it appears to take on a completely different spin again and I'm all here for it. I guess that's part of the charm, and that is just how life goes.