The Dark Forest
Ratings608
Average rating4.3
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 these books multiple times over the last couple of years, the second book remains undisputedly
My favourite.
DNF at page 294.
I'm so sorry that I've spent any time on this book at all. Where first book had more or less some plot, here it felt like never ending rambling. Over and over again. And again. And one more time.
By the way, cardboard characters have more personality than characters in this book.
Re-read. Genuinely better on a second pass, like a Greek tragedy. I also appreciate the sociology a lot more this time around - it’s the sociology in the background that brings this book to life, not its central thesis. Audiobook narrator wasn’t great, but listening to this book was also an incredible experience, highly recommend for a second time.
On ne sait pas d'où il a sorti la théorie de la forêt sombre mais honnêtement et comme on dit chez nous BSAHTEK. Zhang Beihai et Luo Ji, vous êtes ces deux chinois que vous pensez être.
Again, the technicality of the science went right over my head! The first 75% of this second book was boring - However, the last part was very suspenseful! I’m off to finish the final book! 3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️!
Ignoring the way women are characterized as beautiful objects to be admired, the revelations of the characters inner thoughts which even the reader aren't privy to is what made the book so entertaining. The rollercoaster of hope and despair wasn't just one note; it happened many times, never in ways I expected which kept me on the edge. Great thought invoking read.
Much better than the first part in terms of the quality of translation. With multiple similar sounding names and people having multiple names (a cultural thing), it's bit hard to immerse in the story. There were also some (IMO) stupid and frenzied decisions by SJF that I didn't find plausible. Still, a very realistic sci-fi!
This is a book with a lot of great moments and ideas. It's sci fi at its best.
Unfortunately, everything between those things is just a meandering and slow read.
much preferred this to the first one, better character development , more interesting plot etc but it still retained the hard science fiction from the first book
Once again I'm incredibly bored with the writing but the concepts are so unique that I can't help but continue.
Parts of this are really good. However, there is so much exposition I wanted to DNF this.
TL;DR
I haven't read Death's End but I've seen many reviews saying that this is the best book in the series. Now after reading it I can confidently say that all of those people are delusional and shouldn't be taken seriously. The only good part about this book is the ending, the last 40/50 pages is where everything important happens. I will explain more in the extensive review but I hope the last entry is better than this.
My Scoring System
I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:
✓ - Main Story: The actual story in this book is good when I get to read about it that is.
X - Side Stories (if it applies): Absolute trash and a complete waste of time, none are interesing and don't lead anywhere, please take my suggestion and skip everything in this book that doesn't have to do with the main story.
X - Characters: The only good character is Da Shi, out of the 20 characters we meet and interact with this is not good.
X - Setting/Ambiance: Seeing the world change from normal day to the future wasn't as interesting as I thought. Didn't like where people live in the future either.
✓ - Ending: Easily best part of the book the only saving grace. The last 40/50 pages were really interesing, the idea and implications proposed are amazing.
Extensive Review
Okay I'm not going to be gently about it, The Three-Body Problem has it's problems as well but at least the 500 pages of that book is about 400 pages the main story and 100 pages of side stuff. Here I'm not joking out of the 500 pages I would say that the important stuff having to do with the Trisolarians, their coming and what is humanity doing to prepare for it is about 200 pages if I'm being generous. Almost everything in this book is about inconsequential stuff that doesn't lead anywhere or isn't important to the main story and it's very frustrating.
To put this into perspective there are literal aliens invaders on their way to earth right now at full speed. Meanwhile all I'm reading about is:
- Three old neighbors talking about current events going on in the world and one of them getting scammed..."what?"
- One of our "main" protagonists remembering a memory about him trying to write a book and falling in love with his fictional character..."what?". This one goes a bit further because he actually thinks that's real deep love and breaks up with his current girlfriend over it. Deranged behaviour and absolute degeneracy by our so called "scientist", goes to a psychiatrist and he tell him that's normal and nothing to worry about. "What is this world?".
- One of our "main" protagonists is given a huge ammount of power to solve this crisis and since he didn't want that power he just uses it for his own gain to live comfortably..."what?". On top of being one of the most annoying tropes out there it's not even interesing, he just lives in a house watching TVs and buying random stuff that he sees.
Then we have the biggest side story than has more written about it that the actual main story so I'm not even sure it's a side story anymore, enter Zhang Beihai. EASILY top three biggest dumbass in all the books I've read. When his story concluded I could not believe it, I'm not going to spoil anything but just know that when you're reading about him know that you're wasting your time because it will not pay off in the end.
My sugestion is every time you see any mention of the three old guys, the memories of the fictional girlfriend or Zhang Beihai is to just skim over the pages but don't waste any time on them, skim through them to see if it's finally back to the main problem and read that.
Impossible challenge to complete, every time you read the word "Defeatism" or "Escapism" take a shot. You will die before reaching the end. I can't tell you how boring it is to constantly be reading the exact same thing over and over and over without anything new added in. Every single character in this book talks about those two things and it's always the same.
The main problems from the first book are still here, when you read interactions between characters you know it's just two fictional characters saying words to eachother, it's not two people having a conversation. But I gave my opinion on my The Three-Body Problem review. The writting did not improve at all, and Cixin Lui's ability to streth basic descriptions for over four pages is quite outstanding. Important stuff like a space elevator gets a one paragraph explanation while the building for the UN gets like four pages, talking about how the contour of the statues on the front are and forms that the building has..."who cares? it's just a building where corrupt politicians gather stop wasting time on that."
As I said the only good thing about this book is Da Shi and the ending. When you're reading about the actual Trisolarians and what is being done to prepare for them the book is quite interesting. Too bad those are just sprinkled in between the massive garbage side stories that lead nowhere. Yes, the ending of this book and the idea of our "main" protagonist is very terrifying and amazing at the same time. Endings are important to me but it cannot save it this time.
If this book were 300 pages long, cut all the side stuff and just be about this lunatic scientist who's in love with his fictional girlfriend and Da Shi protecting him from ETO while they're trying to prepare for the Trisolarians then I would believe those people saying this is the best book in the series.
The amount of existential dread and the nihilistic look at humanity really had me on the edge...of a 24 storey building, 1000 / 10, will read again.
This is my second time reading this one, last time I read it, I did not have the technical background to understand the topics and technologies discussed in the book, it demands a bit of basics in Physics, CS (dat CPU made using an army of soldiers was lit...haha), which is why I can appreciate this book much more now.
I keep thinking about the quote “If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”
If this were the first book in a series I would've given up on it super early. I only kept reading cause book one was so good. It stuck the landing but tthere were some very rough parts
Characters: ★★ Atmosphere: ★★★★★ Writing Style: ★★★ Plot: ★★★ Intrigue: ★★★ Relationships: ★★★ Enjoyment: ★★★Rating: ★★★The Dark Forest struggles with the same issues as its predecessor but ends on a high note.We continue our story throughout the next few hundred years with humanity trying desperately to come up with a plan to defend themselves against the ominous Trisolarans. In this second book, I found the plot lagging along and suffered from a distinct lack of dehydration. We primarily follow Luo Ji, a sexist astronomer who has never felt true love. It's fine to have an unlikable character, but nearly all of the characters in The Dark Forest are hard to read about. We spend far too long learning about Luo Ji's creation of his dream woman and his visions of her throughout the story. He even goes so far as to use government funding to find a real version of her, a woman who somehow is okay with all this and is happy to marry and have a child with him.It's not just Luo Ji who is unlikable. All of the Wallfacers are stiff, self-involved, and apparently unable to come up with even an inkling of a plan to save humanity without mass murdering the very people they're aiming to protect. I found this a little unimaginative and lazy. I also found the use of time-jumping with cryostasis a bit convenient to move the plot along. We enter the future where everything has been progressing along, but no further progress was attempted towards the Wallfacer project. No new Wallfacers of later generations were assigned, and humanity has mostly become overconfident that they'll beat the Trisolarans when they arrive. We really believe no other attempts would be made? The ETO just dissolved?It was hard to read the droplet scene. Not because it was horrific and graphic, but because I cannot believe that humanity as a whole anticipated this droplet for 200 years and once it arrived they assumed that it was friendly? It was sent 200 years ago, when humanity was even less of a threat. I would have thought humanity got smarter and more aware of extra-terrestrial dangers following the Trisolaran contact. Nope!The last quarter of the book becomes a lot more compelling, with the reveal of Luo Ji's plan and the final conversations with the Trisolarans. Is Luo Ji's plan also just a fuck humanity to fuck the Trisolarans plan like all the other Wallfacers? Yes! But at least he's not DIRECTLY doing it. It is one of the better plans, and it created a really compelling cliffhanger into the next book, which I will probably end up begrudgingly reading.In conclusion, I hope I don't have to read about imaginary dream girls for the rest of the year.
This is a book that builds on its predecessor's already fairly bleak ending to double down, hard, to the extent that I'm honestly rather glad that SETI has not been successful in establishing contact.
As in The Three-Body Problem, Liu uses the classic thought experiment as the template for his fiction: given current scientific understanding, what if? And when needed, the author repeats the question again and again, alongside explanations and demonstrations that are accessible and, as often as not, awe-inspiring.
This series as a whole so far takes the Fermi Paradox as its jumping-off point: Given the vastness of the universe, where is everyone else? The first book gives an elegant solution with an ominous conclusion; this book gives it a turn toward cosmic horror territory, in a way that I won't go into for obvious reasons.
One might quibble about the characters (Luo Ji is definitely a very punchable main character for a solid while), but Liu Cixin's work is never really about the characters, rather about the ideas and circumstances, and how people might react to them realistically. And in that I think he succeeds.
In any case, if you have read and enjoyed The Three-Body Problem, this is a book whose ideas' audacity and presentation blow the earlier book out of the water, while still somehow not diminishing it. This trilogy is really coming out of nowhere to be some of my favorite reading of 2023.
4.5*
The writing style is still a bit too cumbersome and all over the place for my taste, however the second book has grown on me with its rich and quite plausible narrative. I believe science fiction should evoke a sense of wonder and this book does exactly that.
Listen, the translation is kind of flat, the writing perfunctory, and the innumerable pages focusing on Luo Ji's waifu who literally gets fridged was so confusingly unnecessary.
But I like how Cixin Liu thinks. In a world where Trisolaran sophons can monitor all earthly communication, the United Nations Planetary Defence Council elects four Wallfacers who are given free rein and unlimited budget to carry out massive plans whose true intention must belie their surface appearance. It's a small wedge that humans seek to leverage as Trisolaran's thoughts are open to each other making deception an unknown concept. But the perfect, shut the front door, Wallfacer Luo Ji plan, is to cast a galactic spell on a distant planet and how it gets explained is exactly why I love Cixin Liu.