Death's End
by Cixin Liu (2010)
2024 reads, 13/22
“In the eternal night of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, two civilizations had swept through like two shooting stars, and the universe had remembered their light.”
Again, keeping this review fairly light since it hinges on the events of the previous two novels in the trilogy. But man, oh man, what a way to end. This series will destroy you, and then put you back together again.
The story has evolved from Ye Wenjie first making contact with the Trisolarans, to the fate of the earth, the solar system, and the entire universe. Through space exploration, theoretical physics, and even fairy tales, Liu manages to weave a well-crafted story with scary sci-fi and hope for humanity. Apparently there’s lots of fan-written material out there for those who felt that this story was incomplete – but I didn’t feel that way at all, it ended exactly how it should have.
I really enjoyed the characters as well – I will be thinking of the story of Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming for a long time to come. Thomas Wade and 艾AA are also enjoyable to read as well, and they both complement Cheng Xin’s humanity with fierceness (albeit in different ways).
The Three-Body Problem was the prologue, The Dark Forest was the reaction, and Death’s End is the ultimate conclusion. This is an amazing science fiction trilogy, and I’m so happy that Netflix decided to renew and let the Game of Thrones team finish the series.
“Finally, a chain of organic molecules, trembling, split into two strands. The strands attracted other molecules around them until two identical copies of the original were made, and these split apart again and replicated themselves…. In this game of building blocks, the probability of producing such a self-replicating chain of organic molecules was so minuscule that it was as if a tornado had picked up a pile of metallic trash and deposited it as a fully-assembled Mercedes-Benz. But it happened, and so, a breathtaking history of 3.5 billion years had begun.”