The Dark Forest

2.5/5 stars

I whole-heartedly agree with Stevie Kincade's 2-star review and this review from Simon McNeil.

2 things I remember about this book
- the nostalgia & sentimentalism of the first half
- the exceptional quality of the last 100 pages

The first thing got lost in the English translation, due to my assumption that the Vietnamese translator is as much faithful as possible to the original text

To give an example: After getting back from hibernation, Zhang Beihai meets the Asian Fleet commander in charge for the first time: “Zhang Beihai's words touched something in the commander's heart. He turned and looked out through the window at the river of stars, like the upper reaches of a long river.” In the Vietnamese text, it's not the “the upper reaches of a long river”, but is “phía thượng nguồn dòng chảy thời gian” (literally translated as “the upper reaches of the flow and ebb of time”).
Not only the English sentence sounds clumsy, it strips out the sensation of being humbled and defeated by time.