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.

After reading The Three Body Problem, I was split. On the one hand, the story had some amazing, innovate takes on science fiction – but on the other I didn't identify with any of the characters. The Dark Forest elevates the sci-fi even more while creating flawed but interesting characters I wanted to see what happened to. The concept of the “Wall Climbers” and the “Wall Breakers” was a welcomed addition – and allowed for a hidden motive to an otherwise linear story. When I think about the wide variety of topics covered, this book has parts that are Battlestar Galactica, Foundation, Caves of Steel, Rendezvous with Rama, Dan Simmons and more.

This book is a mess. On one hand it is full of amazing ideas. On the other hand the execution (writing and explanation) is lacking sense of reality. I was hooked the entire second half of this book but to experience the cosmic horror I had to force myself through the boring first half.

Book is split into three parts and it also felt like the first part was translated by someone else or at least long before the other two. Prose was dry and boring. It may be that it was actually Liu Cixin who wrote it that way but even then a great translator could make it better.

And then there's the weird stuff. Like half an hour long detour about how author's made up characters can get lives of their own in author's mind. It was a slow 90° turn from the story coming out of nothing and ridiculous. Would be a great short story, though. I had a feeling that it was crucial for the later part in the book and I was right. But nevertheless it was weird and the romance could have been written differently, better, less silly.
Da Shi had to be abducted and replaced by a clone because he's nothing like Da Shi in the first book. While I never liked him his cynicism seems to have gone away and that was the only interesting thing about him.

Some of the ideas here are truly astonishing. But I find it hard to believe that politicians are this... naive? Selfless? Uncorrupted?
All of the above. I guess a Chinese author needs to have certain perspective otherwise he won't get published. There was much less CCP propaganda here but it was still present in unnecessary details like asking to create a Wallfacer base in the same spot CCP used to push back Nationalists. That's like a hero of German novel taking place in 2200 would ask to use Hitler's bunker because it was Hitler's and somehow that was a cool nostalgic thing to do.

My biggest pet peeve is that people here aren't people, they're tools to tell the pseudo-scientific ideas that make up the foundation of this series. Boy does the Dark Forest as solution to Fermi's paradox scare me. But the behavior of people, especially the escapists, often doesn't make sense. They are two dimensional embodiments of their ideas instead of fully developed three dimensional characters. This also made it difficult to get through the part one of the book.

But from then on it only got better and better despite the characters because the ideas finally started to develop and author handled them exceptionally well towards the end (except the ending). To get into them is to spoil stuff. But I was promised cosmic horror and I got it in one of the best forms I've come across.

Shame the ending was weird and hasty. Suddenly everything changes just like that? When I think about it it sure is possible. But it would require more than five pages for me to be okay with this conclusion. It's too simplistic. And that's the case with everything that doesn't work in this book. Either it's waved by a hand simple and therefore takes me out of immersion or it's incredibly thought through and makes me happy I did not give up on this series.

I'd love to give this book 5 stars but I can't because of the first slow half and the ending. But second half is solid 5/5.

El arranque se me hizo algo lento y confuso. Pero llega un punto en que no puedes parar de leer. Echo en falta la organización de la historia en capítulos, los saltos repentinos de unos personajes a otros son molestos a veces.
Como historia, no defrauda. Es increíble. Estoy deseando leerme el último libro

A tough/hard science start, but gets picks up and good gosh, the ideas in this book are...wow, expansive!

The Three Body Problem ends in a way that left me feeling like I had to read the second book in the trilogy, and Ye Wenjie passes on the story to Luo Ji, though as the read we're not sure how or why at this early point.

I found the first chunk of the book (around 20%) pretty tough to read and very “hard science”, but then it feels like the groundwork has been laid and the story kicks into gear.

One thing I found myself thinking over and over as I read through the book are how amazing Liu Cixin's mind is to be able to create these broad, world impacting ideas founded in (what I seemed to think was) real science. The variety and twist of ideas are quite amazing - particularly as the author tells of different ways that the entirety of humanity could be obliterated!

The last 1/4 of the book sped up for me and the story galloped towards a finale that tapered off fairly nicely at the end. Certainly I feel like this ending is enough to stop at (though I'll definitely read the last in the trilogy, Death's End).

Great stuff, if a little heavy at first.

The probable solution for Fermi Paradox; this book explores this concept and put it into a thrilling story. When the solution is revealed, this story is turning into “cosmic horror”, and this is really what I felt when I learned the logic derivations.

Well, the scary part is not about the supernatural and the unknowable like Lovecraftian stories, but it is the hopelessness and knowing that there is literally no way out. We are just tiny, powerless, helpless creatures inside the Dark Forest. Possibly there are millions of millions “hunters” scattered within our unlimited size of the universe, hiding, lurking, and ready for total annihilation of our fragile civilization.

While the main idea of the story is super interesting, however, the execution of the story is otherwise. First of all, the book can be shrunk in half (or even less!), there are sooo many “side” stories that don't really add value to the main story. You can literally skip them and the story is unchanged. Second, the story seems so slow; stark contrast with The Three-body Problem which has a very fast pace and dense story. So many up-and-down and it also less “hard-science” than the preceding.

Unpopular opinion, I like The Three-body Problem more than The Dark Forest.

This is a really fascinating series and I can understand why it's so revered. There are a ton of big and intricate ideas that I will continue to think about for a long while. I love how the ever-approaching threat coupled with their near-omnipotent power creates this environment of non-sensical yet logical strategies of the "wallfacers" and the sort of murder-mystery parlor scene "wallbreaker" moments, somehow the tone works in a tantalizing and almost silly way, while still causing some existential dread.

I even just loved the conceptualization of small things like temporal "countrymen".

There are only a few things that prevent me from giving this a full-hearted recommendation. At times it gets bogged down in some details or logical explanatory tangents that just feel unimportant to me and go on for awhile, distracting from the main thrust of the story. I also just think that most of the characters are fairly personality-less, there are some simple archetypes here and there, but I didn't find any of them uniquely compelling aside from their function in the plot. This could be by design with the nature of the story, or perhaps its an issue with the translation here, but either way I didn't feel as fully invested in some moments that I think I could have otherwise been.

Still, a great book that I think I enjoyed a bit more than the first! I'll probably try to finish of the trilogy pretty soon here.

This is one of the greatest hard sci-fi series I've ever read, and I've not even read the final part of the trilogy.
The main problem of the previous part of the book was the characterization - this part solved it, and how! The characters are not paper cutouts, for once, and Cixin just loves to string along the reader on tangents that are absolutely relevant to the plot - you just realize it later.
And the way seemingly disparate elements like eleven-dimensional particles and cosmic sociology are harmonically merged is nothing short of mind-blowing. The sci-fi part of the book is not at all difficult to grasp, but it still manages to hold your attention all the same, since it takes every trope about sci-fi and first contact there is - and throws it out of the window.
To summarize, I would recommend this series to everyone who has the slightest bit of interest in how futuristic science will look like - this book is sheer, unadulterated delight.

After reading The Three Body Problem, I was split. On the one hand, the story had some amazing, innovate takes on science fiction – but on the other I didn't identify with any of the characters. The Dark Forest elevates the sci-fi even more while creating flawed but interesting characters I wanted to see what happened to. The concept of the “Wall Climbers” and the “Wall Breakers” was a welcomed addition – and allowed for a hidden motive to an otherwise linear story. When I think about the wide variety of topics covered, this book has parts that are Battlestar Galactica, Foundation, Caves of Steel, Rendezvous with Rama, Dan Simmons and more.

Not something I'd recommend for everyone, but for me this was almost perfect science fiction. It's full of wild and mind bending ideas and it will keep your imagination running at top speed the entire time.

My only critique is that I didn't connect well with the characters, but then again they aren't really the focus of the book either. They are mostly there as a vehicle for the story of humanity and the Trisolarians and that's fine.

Awesome book, and I'm looking forward to the third chapter!

Given how terrific Book 1 was, I'm gonna blame the translation for this one. Lacked cohesion, read so mechanical it felt like I was taking apart a space shuttle. While gripping in certain chapters, it dragged in others & I wondered if I should give up. 3 stars only cuz I'm still convinced of the potential of the series.

I really hope Ken Liu translates this one as well. Will re-read.

Reading about an ant painstakingly tracing each character on a gravestone signals the early slog. The flatness of the first two parts cannot be pinned entirely on the alternate translator either. The details are dull and offensive. Women squeal and fuss, and when they're overeducated they calcify. The ones with speaking parts admit that the protagonist is better at their work than they are, or are dismissed as small with no air of authority, or remain nameless and/or are dispatched by violence, or are pure fantasy, insistently innocent and childlike. Colonisers are labelled art-preservingly advanced and the colonised backwards. If you can wade through the carrying over of misogyny and non-Trisolaran imperialism in Liu's vision, there are some rewards in part three (the teardrop and the cosmic fight for resources are thrilling), still diluted by legitimising a character's manipulation by threat of suicide, a despair orgy, and rumination-attempts on the power of love.

This was a delightful followup to The Three-Body Problem entering yet another depth I was not ready for in a science fiction book. There were parts of this book, however, that I felt were a little forced to get a point across or move the narrative along... there were also some mysteries left up in the air that I felt should have been answered. Definitely give this a read if you liked the first book in this trilogy!

The book starts off from the perspective of an ant, which was certainly neat but it went on endlessly and after a while I just found it irritating. This turned out to predicate how I would feel about the rest of the book in general.
We then learn a strange new fact about the aliens: they cannot lie or deceive nor do they even understand the concept of deception. This tidbit becomes the crux of the book: how can you use deception to defeat the incoming aliens and their superior technology. Again, neat but ultimately irritating.

For mostly inexplicable reasons, the UN decides to give infinite resources to four people to deceive the aliens who are watching them, giving the hope of humanity to these people without ever knowing what they're up to. Oh and they can live for 400 years through cryotech that apparently exists now. Also, for equally logical reasons, thinking about leaving the planet is against the law. Also the entire book is 600 pages and only 4 chapters.
I enjoy a challenging read as much as anyone (maybe more), but the only thing this challenged was my patience.

The book leaves plotlines dangling all over the place, takes tangents such as 20 pages about a guy's imaginary girlfriend, and takes leaps of logic that are frankly ridiculous.

After the first book, this was an enormous disappointment. The unique combination of cutting edge science, revolutionary history and philosophy in the first book hooked me, despite some issues I had with characters and plot direction. This book has none of that, but instead inflates all the author's shortcomings by focusing on the author's Socialogical ideas and theories of what an apocalypse would look like. They are not good.
According to the author, there seems to be only two types of people in the world: nihilistic geniuses and idiots. That shallow philosophy should not be 600 pages long.
I gave up after 130 pages, and that's really upsetting because I thought this would be my next favourite sci-fi series. Oh well, better books await...