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.