Review: The Dark Forest

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

~4 stars for the first 2/3rd's of this book. 5 for the last part. Because I wish there were better ways of conveying nuance in reviews here.

One of my coworkers read this series in its original Mandarin and gave a comment to me recently about how its English translation doesn't read that closely to the original in tone, with a lot more "expressive" language in places where the original would've been more dry (considering that the author comes from an engineering background). I get where he was coming from, but I have to say that even with that in mind, there are particular areas in characterization/plotting/prose that might still feel dry, or unusual for lack of a better word.

With regards to the plotting specifically, for a good chunk of this book, I wasn't clear how much I liked the direction it was going in, although of course in hindsight it sort of makes sense. It's one of those stories where it feels like you're dealing with a bunch of red herrings in the process of trying to figure out what the point of everything is (...at one point I even thought the setting was a red herring), and all the while wondering whether or not the diversions are really worth it. In the same manner many characters come and go with varying relevance, and especially for someone who lacks familiarity with Chinese names, it can be hard to keep track of all of them.

The ideas on the other hand are awesome, especially w.r.t. their relevance in understanding the universe and our place in it. It's probably the closest thing I've read to true hard sci-fi; I really enjoyed the realistic aspects of it (like how communication and combat would actually work in space) and also the role human psychology played into all of this at the same time. And I felt chills during certain parts that reminded me of particular moments from sci-fi films-- which also makes me wish this book was adapted into a film so that I could experience that again here.

To be honest, I might still prefer the experience of reading Three Body Problem when it comes to certain parts of this book early on. But it's pretty clear by part three that the predecessor was just world-building/setup for this, and the ending is worth it. One of those few occasions where the sequel is worth reading after the original and also stands alone on its own merits (I remember complaining about this last time with His Dark Materials lol).