Death's End

After reading first and second book, I was disappointed that the third one is yet to be translated to my language. I was skeptical of reading english version, but I decided to try it as an audiobook. Narration was beautiful and mesmerizing, I was completely emreged in the story.
I couldn't have predicted any decision characters made nor did I see it coming. Loved it!
Now that I've finished the series, I can't tell am I experiencing book hangover or existencial crysis

FUCK OFF THAT WAS SO GOOD.

Time, the great equalizer.

I think it was a perfect ending to this science-fiction epic. The scope of this book is insane from the setting to the concepts. I cannot adequately express how impressive it is, you just have to read it.

This book contained a scene that STILL gives me full body shivers when I think about it and one completely different scene that was so devastating that I had to put the book down for a bit.

Absolutely victorious. I feel like I ran a marathon.

If I had to rank the series it would be:
1. Death's End
2. The Three Body Problem
3. The Dark Forest

But you absolutely must read all 3. You have approximately 29 days from today to read all 1700ish pages before the Netflix series butchers it, if you do 100 a day you might just make it.

I'll just end with Cixin Liu is a genius and Ken Liu did a FANTASTIC job with the translation. Kudos to everyone involved, an absolute banger.

Masterpiece, masterpiece, masterpiece. One masterpiece for every book in the series.

Cixin Liu has such a clear, concise and direct writing style with 0 fluff that makes it refreshing to read. No over describing the colour of the walls and facial micro expressions and the poetic emptiness of space, none of that. He writes in such a way that you come up with those metaphors and poetics yourself. You feel what he wants you to feel with the situations he portrays.

As for the plot?
This ties in with the Dark Forest for my most favourite book in the series, fuck, favourite book ever (for now). While the Dark Forest focuses on humanity's reaction to the mystery revealed in the Three Body Problem, Death's End is very much like the three body problem in physics. Unpredictable as fuck. And I love that. Each development always leaves you thinking, “What could possibly happen now???” And a new development occurs that makes you repeat that question.
Just the sheer scope, imagination, creativity and use of real scientific concepts leaves me astounded as to how one man could write all this. How much research did he do? Did he have to do any research at all or does all of that knowledge just exist in his head? Idk...

I was initially led to reading this series by a YouTube video called ‘The most horrifying series in science fiction'. The video asked me to pause, read the series, and come back. So I paused, read the series and never came back. Because I understand why someone would think that way. The implications and concepts outlined in the book might be horrifying to some. But the sheer creativity in those concepts... Man. I'm more amazed than terrified.

Overall, 10/5. A five star rating just isn't enough. So I give it a five star two times.

Wow. Vermutlich werde ich auch an den dritten Teil der Serie noch eine ganze Weile denken. Unglaublich.

Die Welt und Konzepte und Story Elemente sind einzigartig und man kann sich vor Cixin nur verbeugen.

Bedrohungen in diese Reihe sind wirklich beängstigend und insbesondere dieser Band ist voll von Existenz Anxiety Triggern (TM).

Vermutlich ist das Buch nicht für jeden geeignet. Die Figuren und alle Protagonisten der Reihe wirken teilweise nur wie Storyvehikel. Sie sind okay, aber an sich nicht spannend.
Ist im Endeffekt aber okay, die Story ist größer als die Figuren.
Viiiiiel Größer! (Hier gruselige Theamin Musik vorstellen)

Sollte man erlebt haben

5/5

If this were a technical rating, the book would get 5 stars. For me however, the book felt like a bit of a slog. It took me 2 months to read it and the story line, good gosh, feels like it is stretched across time.

I felt like there were large sections of the story that didn't really apply to anything in the overall arch that we were following - or maybe it was so long that I lost the thread of the story!

It also felt like the main protagonist, Cheng Xin, was being constantly punished by the author - although she does admit her own uphill climb in one of the later chapters entitled “The Stairs of Responsibility”.

The ending of the book (last 15%) also describes in detail the end of the Solar System. It's pretty visual and pretty bleak, and one heck of an idea to wrap my head around.

In fact, the book is full of ideas that are hard to wrap my head around - and that's what Liu Cixin does amazingly well.

For me though, as someone who is reasonably new to hard sci-fi, I found this book to tip me over the edge into “whoa, this is a bit much”. I've also read that apparently there's a fourth book in the works (or even finished) and I've no idea how that story would even continue!!!

As for the contents of the story, I'm not sure I can even explain - certainly epic and thought provoking!

I liked this the least of the trilogy. It felt less cohesive than the others and I was just less invested in what was happening.

There is an interesting cloud of dread and nihilism over the whole thing, and like the other books it is still full of a bunch of wild little ideas and scenes.

This is a fascinatingly unique trilogy though that will stick with me for awhile!

Que esta serie va sobre un primer contacto con vida extraterrestre o una invasión. Pues no, va mucho más allá.

Había leído sólo el primer libro hace algunos años y no continué esperando a que estuviera la trilogía completa, pero se me fue pasando y tuvo que ver que de repente no leía tanta ciencia ficción, hasta el año pasado. Por eso y porque decidí avanzar con series empezadas.

Empezando puedo decir que esta serie se va al top y no sé si se puedan encontrar tantas que lleguen o se acerquen a la magnitud de lo que abarca Liu Cixin con esta trilogía. También mencionar como algunos capítulos podrían funcionar como historias cortas y como metiendo personajes nuevos logra que te interesen en pocas páginas.

Lo que diría de esta tercera parte es que a diferencia de las primeras dos, que aunque se siga a un personaje principal, tiene varios personajes que te van llevando por la historia de años, décadas y siglos. En este hay muy pocos personajes y se siente más llegado a las 3/4 partes del libro, donde de repente si es como estar leyendo una enciclopedia.

Estuve debatiéndome entre las 4 y 5 estrellas, y deje que dependiera del final. Y pues ni modo.

Cixin Liu did something really impressive with this trilogy. Keeping the high quality throughout the 3 books is a great achievement, considering that a lot of series just go deep down after a second book .

The last 100 pages of this book were simply one of the most outstanding sections in all of three books. Such a dread and nostalgic sensation with all the memories of the old Earth.

Though the main character of the book is very naive and behave very odd for most of the situations , it did not compromise the whole experience of the story.

I feel that this series has gotten better with each subsequent book culminating into an amazing finale. That being said Death's End was still a novel of two tales for me. On the one hand you have some of the most brilliant future science fiction out there. Idea's that absolutely capture the imagination and you see how humanity progresses and regresses over such a large time scale. It's incredibly enthralling.

Then on the other side, without going into spoilers, you have certain decisions that Cheng Xian is making through the novel, but some of them have extremely weak reasoning and are not very compelling. It gets to the point that it's actually bit frustrating.

So again I didn't like the character writing...is basically what that amounts to. Story of the three books there. Yet, I found the science fiction aspect so captivating and enjoyed the unfolding of this incredibly bleak story to such an extent that it not only warrants 5 stars despite any flaws it may have, but it will also hold a place on my favourites list moving forward. 

My feelings about the series are mixed: I liked the way science concepts are introduced. The story in the first book starts from 1960s and with each time-jump, new technologies are introduced. The new science/technologies seem consistent, well-explained, believable, and build upon the previously introduced ones. The scenes in Gravity and Blue Space feel genuinely mystifying and extremely well-thought of. I also liked the fairy tales and guessing at deciphering the message.

Since this is a translation, I didn't expect natural or powerful prose. But even with this low expectation, the story feels like reading summary of the story. I also didn't like the main characters with the exception of Luo Ji and Da Shi. The main character of this book makes weird decisions that made her hard to root for. The overall tone of the narration seemed to glorify authoritarianism, sexism ( males are all for conviction and discoveries, females apply brakes on the progress by favoring love ), and herd mentality (population is neatly divided into groups whose members all think alike).

Loved the way the story unfolds until the end of the universe.

Que decepción tan grande. Todo arranca muy bien, pero aproximadamente después de las primeras 300 páginas solo viene un montón de descripciones, información bruta, más descripciones y puro y duro aburrimiento. Cixin Liu ha jugado conmigo. Tantas páginas y horas esperando lo que nunca ocurre.

Durante casi toda la saga Cixin interpreta y adapta teorías científicas reales a su mundo ficticio de forma muy interesante, pero para la segunda parte de este libro la historia deja de ser de ciencia ficción para convertirse en un aburrido relato de fantasía. Las ideas científicas se vuelven ridículas y en exceso inverosímiles.

Cheng Xin es la peor personaje femenina que he leido en la vida.