The Dark Forest

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.