DEATH'S END brings popular Chinese science fiction author's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy (begun with Hugo winner THE THREE BODY PROBLEM) to a rousing, fulfilling, and moving conclusion. It is a story that spans millions of years and multiple universes. It is strange, wonderful, full of ideas, and thought provoking. It is grand in scope and despite that, personal in nature. It is quite possibly the best science fiction book of 2016, which was full of science fiction novels that could claim that title, as this year's Best Novel Hugo finalist list attests to. It deserves all those superlatives and more.
A summary of the plot of DEATH'S END is somewhat difficult, although the story itself is told in a somewhat straightforward (I was tempted to put the phrase "sometimes meandering" after straightforward, but that just didn't seem like the right thing to do) sequential manner. The story starts, in essence, where THE DARK FOREST left off. The people of Earth and the Trisolarans are at a standstill. Luo Ji, the one Wallfacer that actually did his job properly, found a way to hold off the Trisolaran attack via the Dark Forest defense. Luo Ji became what was called The Swordholder. The Swordholder was tasked with the responsibility of broadcasting the location of Trisolaris if the Trisolarans should head to earth to attack. The drawback is that broadcasting the location of Trisolaris would also give away the location of Earth, thus dooming both planets to attack from another malevolent civilization out there in the cosmos.
The story, then is how humanity moves forward in the face of impending disaster. Unlike both THE THREE BODY PROBLEM and THE DARK FOREST, which have enough central characters to keep track of to make George R.R. Martin look like a rookie (okay, maybe not many, but you get the idea), DEATH'S END does have one central character, Cheng Xin. She is the character that ties all the sections of the book together as well as the character upon which the fate of humanity hinges. Time and again, Cheng Xin is called upon to make critical decisions. The most important decision comes not long after she is elected by the Earth's population to become the next Swordholder after it is time for Luo Ji to step down from that post. We all know that every decision has a consequence that leads to another decision point, and Cheng Xin finds herself in the middle of every monumental decision that is made in the book (granted, the nature of storytelling is to put the protagonist front and center and let him or her sort it out). And every decision is more monumental than the previous, leading up to the final decision at the end of the book.
While the threat of the Trisolarans is present throughout the novel, there is a point at which the focus changes from fear of attack from the Trisolarans (for reasons which I will not go into here) to that of protecting and saving humanity over the long haul. That's not to say the Trisolarans didn't have their moment in the sun (sorry about that) in the story, but they nearly became an afterthought as humanity switch its goal from defending itself against the Trisolarans to defending itself against the universe.
One more item about the structure of the novel before I move on to other things. The story is broken up into eras, which are listed in the front of the book and cover from the present all the way through 18906416 (In the timeline of Universe 647 - there, did that whet your appetite? If not, I have more coming.), although in reality (and I'm not sure which reality I'm talking about at this point) the story doesn't actually end in that year. The framework is a memoir entitled "A Past Out of Time", from which excerpts are presented from time to time. It proved to be, at least for me, an effective way to move the story along and provide perspective to what exactly was happening.
This book is a lot of things, but one thing it isn't is a traditional story where there's a hero and a villain and a battle at the end to decide the victor (although that kind of story seems to be slowly disappearing from view). Sure, there's a protagonist in Cheng Xin, but she's really there to tie up all the eras (by going into hibernation which enables her to span those eras) and be there from beginning to end to provide a familiar thread while Cixin Liu does what he really wants to do: blow our minds.
It's a story of the survival of humanity, a story of moral decisions, a story of love - of one person for another as well as one person for the entire human race - and a story of frenzied, mind blowing concepts and ideas that has the reader's head constantly spinning. Just when you get your head around a particular idea that Cixin Liu is presenting, he throws it away in favor of another equally mind blowing idea that is just as relevant to the situation at hand. I'll just list a few here: firearms that shoot bullets which contain a mini-black hole inside of them; the attainment of lightspeed by a method called curvature space propulsion, which has the potentially nasty side effect of reducing the speed of light in its wake to a point so slow that those trapped within its field can't get out, and thus are stuck there forever in something called a Black Domain; the concept of a weapon that can destroy its intended target by transforming the area of space from three dimensions to two dimensions; and just how do you file an insurance claim on the death of someone who fell into a mini black hole when in their frame of reference they've fallen through the event horizon but in our frame of reference it will take so long for them to fall through the event horizon that the claim will never be able to be made?
Along with the flood of ideas comes its companion, the flood of exposition, or infodumps, if you will. It seems inevitable that with each complex idea there is an accompanying firehose worth of information regarding that idea. Sometimes it comes in the form of "As you know, Bob...", and sometimes it comes in the form of the author simply - well, I don't think there's anything simple about any of the ideas - telling the reader about it with large amounts of exposition, which sometimes lasts for several pages. If there's anything that could slow this book down and be a bit problematic, it's the infodumps. One could argue that at 600+ pages the book could use some editing, but it could also be argued that in order for Cixin Liu to get his ideas across those infodumps are necessary. In the long run, they didn't ruin my enjoyment of the novel, but I can see where they could be a problem for some readers.
With regard to the narrator, P.J. Ochlan, it should be said that he did a wonderful job creating different voices for the characters and seamless changing between them when called upon to do so. His narration never took me out of the story, and he truly did the best he could with the aforementioned long and involved infodumps. I enjoyed listening to him and would be interested in listening to other books for which he is the narrator. I feel as if his style supplemented and augmented the tone that Cixin Liu was looking for in the novel, and if I ever find time I would be interested in going back and listening to his narration of DARK FOREST. He did not narrate THE THREE BODY PROBLEM.
With regard to Ken Liu's translating job, once again, since I don't know Chinese I cannot say how much his translation represented what Cixin Liu was trying to tell the reader. I did enjoy the text of the story, and it felt well written. There's not much else I can say about it.
It's no secret that I'm a sucker for cosmic, mind blowing ideas. I fall for the grand scope of a story that spans millions of years and multiple parallel universes, including the old message in a bottle trope. Yeah, I just love all that stuff. DEATH'S END is the book I've been waiting to read for several decades. A book like it may never come along again.
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Worth reading once
Obama was right, it was wildly imaginative and I can see why it’s one of Elon Musk’s favorite series. I’m sure the ideas and concepts will be “borrowed” by other Sci-fi writers. I wasn’t wholly satisfied with how he tied everything off, but it was a good read. I doubt I’ll read it again though. Didn’t crack my top 10.
