The plot is sharp, original, and unintuitive - which goes a fair way towards making up for the characters in this book. Luo Ji's listlessness and apathy, plus his vaguely sexist "great love", made him a hard person to pin the hope of humanity on. Zhang Beihai was a character that's easy to admire but hard to love. This translation was also a drag in comparison to Ken Liu's in the first book, which was distinctly more poetic.

I don't want to undersell the plot, which again, was sharp and unexpected. But plots and ideas without anchoring characters is like a house without a family, you know? Weirdly empty. 

As with the prequel to this book the confusion continues, the pacing of the book is different from the first and it is difficult to decide if it is due to the set up or the change of translator. It is slow paced with bits of spiked climax. The characters are still difficult to love and with this story line it is difficult to determine who I should be cheering for from both a character and story line perspective.

Towards the end of the book there is an incident involving the rogue spaceships, and a great battle

It felt like there was a lot of words and circular thought to get to this main climax of the second book in this series. I love the overall concept and the meaning of the dark forest within the context of the story. 

I almost never like sequels more than the first but I enjoyed The Dark Forest a lot more than The Three Body Problem.

This novel was a lot less hard scientists fiction (which I struggled a bit with the first one not understanding all of the physics concepts), and goes much more into speculative fiction and examines a lot of different perspectives re the aftermath of the first novel (like psychology, economics, etc). 

It is meandering in the beginning and a bit in the middle but I really enjoyed the meandering, I like the writing style and I enjoyed the literary wandering we were doing. 

And then what a build up the whole first 2 parts are to the third! The buildup really pays off. 

I loved the weird parts of this novel: Space assassination using meteriorite bullets,Luo Ji getting almost murdered like 8 times by a computer virus targeting him, That ball thing just straight up blowing everything up! The future's description with the social dynamics and just the structure of the buildings and the clothes, Loved the book opening and ending with ants

 



Female characters non-spoiler rant:
The one thing that almost held me back from giving this book a five stars is the writing of it's female characters. In my opinion, it really drops the ball on this especially given that I thought the portrayal of women in the first was pretty good! Especially given the context of that story. Female characters in this story do not have their own goals, motivations, or desires that exist beyond the male characters they interact with. Just so disappointing. 

I almost stopped at around 30% because I was offended by what the actual fuck was happening with a female character lol. The way a specific woman was described just felt nauseating, weird, patronizing and too child-like. I'm hoping that maybe the descriptors were lost in translation a bit. Because I did notice near the beginning it said something like a character "had a naughty problem" and naughty did not make sense to use there at all.
But I'm really glad I pushed through because the scenes that are like this don't last that long and I loved the rest of the book. 

Spoilers:

Like repeatedly talking about how delicate and dainty and pure and innocent and making Zhuang Yan, a grown women, sound like a child. Also its not just her, the book often uses weird patronizing language to describe other women.

And I enjoyed Luo Ji having an imaginary girlfriend! I thought it was weird and fun and I thought it worked in the story because it shows the reader that he is able to have an extremely complicated inner world that would make him a good candidate to be a wall facer. But then the fact that he makes someone find him a real girl who fits his imagination is like gross-weird not fun-weird. And then it feels really uncomfortable before you find out much later that this woman is like in on the plan and apparently had her own motives. Because at first you're like, did this woman get kidnapped? Why is she so fucking chill about being kidnapped?? Like where did they find her and why does she not seem to have any agency or care wtf is happening to her!!

A fantastic follow up to the Three-Body Problem. The world created by Cixin Liu is just so captivating in its enormity, the constant technicality and back-and-forth was riveting. An extremely comprehensive science fiction, it is hard to find fault with the narrative brilliantly illustrated by Liu.

Of course, the book's characters aren't exactly the deepest, but they act more as assets to build upon the true protagonist of the novel, the world itself. Politics, theory, physics, astronomy, sociology, ethics - they all play a role in the way things unfold in this book. But it does not simply feel like a mish mash of concepts, it is a comprehensive and very enthralling story, that although can be highly technical at times, is attractive in its relative plausibility and sheer magnitude.

Super slow at the beginning, but what a superb finish.

I really do love the hard, challenging science in this sci-fi, the big ideas about the nature of the universe and human and alien culture and behavior, however bleak, but Liu’s characters are sacrificed to this and are just so flat and shallow. That would be fine if it weren’t for the ridiculously misogynistic way he writes about women. I.E. science professor’s “dream girl” is “slender,” (Liu’s fav word to describe women), “angelicly” beautiful, “naive,” 20-something who immediately falls for him…shocking 🙄 Add to that the popular opinion that it’s a real slog to get to the pay off…I won’t be reading the last one.

this is one of the most effective sequels I’ve read and does an amazing job of expanding on the ideas introduced in TBP. like many have said before, the first 200 pages are an uphill battle to get through which is a shame because if TDF were ~400 pages it would have been the easiest 5 stars I’ve ever given. but the payoff we experience after the wallfacer project is established and they wake from hibernation? equally satisfying, chilling, and action-packed! my only nitpick: I haven’t read much hard sci-fi, but it seems to me that despite being a genre bursting with progressive ideas and characters even brilliant trilogies like this continue to suffer from underwritten, one-dimensional female characters. nevertheless, I will never think about the Fermi paradox and space exploration in the same way ever again.