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. ( )

”The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—-another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—-there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat to any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. (Pp. 484-485)”

The Fermi Paradox: “[T]he dichotomy between the high probability that extraterrestrial intelligence exists and the fact that we have no evidence for such aliens.”—-Jonathon O’Callaghan (https://www.livescience.com/fermi-paradox)

Profundity is hard to come by these days. It’s rare to find in politics or religion anymore, even harder to find in music or movies or the written word. In this era of social media, a profound thought has very little chance of survival before it is tweeted or made into a meme, thus losing its potency.

Occasionally, profundity appears in the unlikeliest of places. More often than not, it’s overlooked or dismissed. Such is the way with profound thoughts, historically.

One of the most profound novel that I have read in years, Cixin Liu’s “The Dark Forest” has two major strikes against it in regards to being taken seriously.

1) It is a sequel. Most people don’t take sequels seriously, and usually for justifiable reasons. With few exceptions, most sequels are either unnecessary, redundant, or just plain pointless. Occasionally, they work to undermine the success of the first in the series. (Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One” was, in my opinion, a great book. “Ready Player Two”, the sequel, was so bad that it made me re-examine what I liked about the first book.) It is, however, a mistake to dismiss a novel’s profundity simply due to the fact that it is a sequel. One of the best books in the American canon (and my personal favorite book of all time), “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, was technically a sequel to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. Published eight years after “Tom Sawyer”, “Huckleberry Finn” took the mold of a boy’s adventure story and turned it on its head, creating an extremely profound story of Southern racism, the evils of slavery, and the power of platonic love. While some critics have dismissed it as too humorous or satirical, others have recognized the profound (and angry) anti-racist sentiments of Twain’s writing.

Liu’s novel is the second book in a trilogy, the follow-up to the equally brilliant and profound “The Three-Body Problem”. It might be easy to dismiss the book knowing that it is the second in a trilogy, namely because many second books in trilogies are bridge novels, acting as nothing more than a way to get from “A”, the first novel, to “C”, the third novel. The “B” novel usually adds very little in the long run and is solely dependent on the two novels on either end.

“The Dark Forest” does not have that problem. It is a superb novel that stands on its own. It has a strong narrative arc that is not necessarily reliant upon the previous novel for understanding, and it tells a complete story that is not “to be continued” in the third book.

But the second strike against it is:

2) It is science fiction. Let’s face it: science fiction is still a genre that doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. There is probably good reason for this, as many people still associate sci-fi with the pulpy “Flash Gordon” theatrics of ray guns and rocket ships and damsels needing rescued from aliens with big green heads. The stereotype persists, though, because a lot of science fiction—-or what people think of as “science fiction”—-still engages in this type of silliness. Let’s be clear, though: the “Star Wars” template of space princesses and light saber duels is more fantasy than science fiction. It always has been. There is very little “science” in that type of fiction. “Real” science fiction is grounded in real science. “Real” science fiction is, at its heart, about humanity and the effects that science and technology has upon it. The best science fiction—-like the best of any genre—-is about people.

“The Dark Forest” is a novel about an alien invasion, but within its 500 pages, the reader is never inundated with descriptions of cities blowing up or details about alien physiognomy or how their starships operate. In fact, for a novel about an alien invasion, we never actually “see” an alien for the first 90% of the novel. This is because the vast majority of the novel is about how an imminent alien invasion affects people. It’s about the social upheaval and the feelings that everyday people would experience in such a situation. This is not “Independence Day”.

“The Dark Forest” is science fiction at its best and most profound. It is a novel that harkens to the classic works of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, and Ursula LeGuin, all genre writers who knew that to make a believable science fiction story about the future or alien worlds or fantastic technological advances one must start with believable human characters. They knew—-as Liu knows—that profundity only works if we, as readers, can relate to it and apply it to our own lives. ( )

Dark Forest is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. It takes off from The Three Body Problem and constructs a world that is at once believable and scary. I have just one thing to say about the author - the imagination required to write something like this is truly enviable! ( )

Naivă și simplistă unde ar fi fost bine să fie complexă, mult prea lungă și încărcată unde ar fi fost bine să fie alertă.
Militarii atât de cretini încât sincer am fumegat de furie, ca militar.
Prea multă propagandă comunistă (un personaj pozitiv și dat dracului e un comisar politic - a existat vreodată ceva mai rău ca meserie? poate inchizitorii, dar alți rivali nu găsesc în monstruozitate).
Soluții grăbite, rapide, la probleme complexe construite lent pe sute de pagini.
Personaje mai bine decât în prima (unde erau dezastru), scriitura însă parcă și mai proastă.
În plus, mie nu mi s-a părut deloc bine legată logic teoria pădurii întunecate și nu m-a convins.
Pe partea bună, are multe de spus, trece treptat de la thriller cu fizicieni la space opera destul de complex, oferă o doză de nostalgie celor născuți înainte de 89 (m-am simțit de parcă citeam SF în anii 80, scris în lagărul comunist), stă foarte bine pe partea de știință și inginerie. Și e cu totul altceva decât SF-ul anglo-saxon sau lălăielile europene smiorcăite care se pretind SF.
Din fericire, se ia în serios. Din păcate, o face chinezește ( )

Misogyny is not a slay ( )