Review: Death's End

Death's End by Liu Cixin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a novel (with characters arcs and such, although I'm really speaking of the series as whole), this is mostly just okay or perhaps even mediocre to some extent. But as an exploration into the potential for space exploration and astrophysics research and all of its implications on a macro-scale, this book/series is amazing.

Most of the characters here mainly exist to help demonstrate difficult scientific concepts at the end of the day. You get a sense of the impact of all of these mind-blowing developments on how insignificant it makes them (and by proxy, us) feel in the bigger scheme of things... and I mean that to a much greater extent than what The Dark Forest left us with, cause I thought the ending of that was mind-blowing enough already.

The second half of this book is just next-level. I haven't read much sci-fi that broaches this scale, but the closest media I've consumed that gets to this is probably End of Evangelion (anime), Xenogears (JRPG), or Narutaru (manga), but those tended toward the more post-apocalyptic-universe side of things just for dramatic story-telling effect. The main difference with this series being, the story here backs its concepts up with enough actual science to make it almost believable that something like this could actually happen to us in the future. And that's just terrifying.

I'll admit it can feel a tad jarring sometimes to see lots of otherwise seemingly average characters suddenly spewing out complicated physics metaphors and PhD level analyses as almost knee-jerk reactions to the crazy things happening around them (like seriously, given recent events I expect your average human/government to be stupider than this), but for the greater good of pushing the limits of this genre, I'm willing to give this all a pass.

To be honest, it's probably debatable which book is better between this and Dark Forest, but overall, I heartily recommend this series as a whole to anyone looking to broaden their understanding of how science can impact us (and I'm going to avoid the obvious pun here lol). Too many book series out there start out with strong first entries only to end on a whimper, but this, this one goes out with a big bang. (literally) (I'm so sorry)

Review: Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Dark Tower is a weird series.

I think Stephen King fans would tell you to read his other major works first (The Stand, It, The Shining, Pet Sematary, Salem's Lot, etc.) first before even starting this just because this series encompasses and almost takes for granted so many concepts introduced in his other books... but ironically, I feel like those books (or at least the ones I've read) stand alone better, or dare I say it are just straight up better experiences than the books in this series. And that's even keeping in mind (according to one of my friends, anyway) that King's short stories are actually better than his novels.

This is probably also one of the few series I've read where I don't necessarily enjoy the individual books as much (compared to other series I bother to continue reading, although I probably like this more than The Expanse) but I still feel compelled to keep reading for some reason. To be honest I probably like this entry the most of the ones I've read so far (Wizard and Glass #4 > Drawing of the Three #2 > The Wastelands #3 > The Gunslinger #1, but everyone else will have their own preferred order), but that's mainly for the scenes and imagery it inspires.

I think the "epic" scope of this series is only just starting to hit me now, four books in, because King finally took the time to establish Roland's backstory here. I kinda wish it had happened earlier because everything up until now just felt like meandering towards some aimless end goal; I still don't know what the Dark Tower "is", who the main villains really are and why they matter, I had to look up what a thinny was and other random terms that people kept tossing around because no one really takes the time to define them and so on.

And well, I just feel like it's hard to explain what this series is about or make it accessible to people, let alone the fact that The Gunslinger is so tonally different from all of the books that came after it that it almost doesn't even feel like part of the same series to me... for anyone else who got turned off by that book, anyway.

All of that said, when events take off and the crazy metaphysical stuff starts to happen, surreal visions and unexpectedly catchy chanting and people going crazy, to an extent that you don't normally see in conventional fantasy-- now that's where King really shines here. It's a pretty different feeling from his small town all-American works like It/Salem's Lot, but even those works hinted at the existence of this otherworldly layer underpinning everything (I'm looking at you, Turtle), so it's nice to finally see those aspects of his extended multiverse almost front and center for once.

And I feel like I'm just tossing around words at this point that won't really mean anything to anyone who hasn't read these books yet lol. I guess I just have to say, The Dark Tower is an experience, and I still recommend it even though I can't say I fully understand or love everything about it. Life (and books) can be complicated like that sometimes.