The Dark Forest

This is just the second book I have read by this author, following, of course, the previous title in the series, so I don’t claim to be an expert. Nevertheless, for those who wish to approach and enjoy his work, I can give you two advices so far:

1. Cixin Liu writes archetypes, so don’t expect characters. One of the most common criticisms I read is that his dialogue is flat and his characters are dull. While I don’t agree on the dialogue (but one should always be mindful to tread carefully while reading a translation), my personal take on characters is that the author’s point isn’t to vividly depict that unique blend of mindset, background and personality we call a character, but to focus on the mindsets instead. If you read him through this lens, you might find a more interesting focus in exploring the different ways a human mind shapes up and responds under a crisis. The first book showed us mostly scientists and researchers, but this second work widens its scope and encompasses politicians, strategists, the military and the laymen. In this, his portraits are never flat, nor are the verbal exchanges between them. The nuances of the different approaches are unparalleled.
2. Cixin Liu writes in parallels. I already explored this while writing about The Thee Body Problem, but I think it’s amplified in this book. And I can’t really get into details without offering spoilers, but I was amazed at how the wider theory (one of the solutions to that Fermi Paradox every science-fiction lover knows and respects) is explained through the crisis of a handful ships, or the general approach of humanity to a crisis of such magnitude is chiseled into the story-arc of the fourth Wallfacer, and I beg you to keep this in mind while you crawl through the seemingly pointless thousand pages of a random dude doing stuff.

Those two points – just like the two points of a theory you’ll read right away, in a first chapter narrated from the point of view of an ant – come together to create a book that’s tough at first but eventually delivers above and beyond your expectations. And if you do brush up on your Fermi paradox, which I believe is the intention of the author in picking such a title, you’ll be shouting and shaking your book and you’ll be harassing every friend and stranger in the street over the magnificence of the concept in this book, the brilliance of the development in this plot and the sheer magnitude of the delivery.

The picture in the header is a homage by illustrator Xiaolin Zeng, you can find it here.