Michael Finocchiaro's Reviews > Death's End

I can hardly heap enough praise onto Cixin Liu's great trilogy and it's incredibly breathless ending, fittingly titled Death's End. The story is so tightly bound to the two previous books and so surprising and astounding and mind-bending that revealing any of the plot here would be a massive spoiler. Rarely have I read a book of such vast scope that was able to maintain a few primary characters and touch upon nearly every field of human knowledge and inquiry: from history to literature to philosophy, from nano-science and quantum physics to astrophysics and string theory, from earth sociology to cosmic sociology...and yet, although it gets very,very technical, the author takes pains to explain the concepts in layman's terms and wherever possible provide visual examples. Note that sometimes, the explanation will come a little after a new phenomenon and so one must be patient, but the patience pays off in a major way.

I think that this trilogy is perhaps even stronger and more internally consistent than even Asimov's classic Foundation Trilogy and I really could not put any of the books down as I was passionately drawn into the story and surprised time and time again by the originality of the ideas and science fiction aspects but also moved by the characters - especially in the second two volumes.

It is sad for me to say goodbye to Sophon and (no spoilers!) at the end because I wanted this marvelous tale to continue. Alas, like all things, Death's End had to end as did a certain character's second-guessing of decisions. One could find a lot of reasons to call the series quite cynical, but I found it to be quite positive at the very end - it left me the feeling that our best quality as humans is the capacity for love of others and I could not have dreamed of a better message. 10 stars :-)

Still months later, the ideas from this book are present in my mind. It is truly amazing.

For parents: definitely a high school or after book with, however, no sex and relatively little violence.
I was far less happy with Ball Lightning by the same author, but so far enjoying The Redemption of Time by Liu’s friend and 3 Body fan, Baoshu!

Fino's Cixin Liu and other Chinese SciFi and Fantasy Reviews
The Three Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End
The Wandering Earth
Supernova Era"
Ball Lightning
The Redemption of Time (Fan Fiction approved by Cixin Liu)
Invisible Planets (Short Story Anthology)
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
The Grace of Kings
The Wall of Storms