Death's End

Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #03

by Cixin Liu

eBook, 604 pages

English language

Published Nov. 3, 2016 by Actes Sud.

ISBN:: 978-0-7653-7710-4
OCLC Number:: 936360629
Goodreads:: 25451264

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(24 reviews)

Death's End (Chinese: 死神永生, pinyin: Sǐshén yǒngshēng) is a science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It is the third novel in the trilogy titled Remembrance of Earth's Past, following the Hugo Award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem and its sequel, The Dark Forest. The original Chinese version was published in 2010. Ken Liu translated the English edition in 2016. It was a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist and winner of 2017 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

10 editions

Kevin reviewed Death's End by Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #03)

End of the line

4 stars

Content warning Some references to other works may hint at spoilers

I couldn't resist and had to finish my binge of the series. This one is truly big, spanning billions of years and tying together many themes and concepts. Cixin Liu will casually cover a topic that in other works would constitute the entirety of the novel, but he does it as a throwaway chapter. Well, not throwaway, but in some cases a topic is introduced, and closed out so quickly that in many cases, the reader is left wanting more or perhaps thinking to themself "was this topic so obvious that the author didn't deem it worthy of covering further?"

The beginning was very confusing and it does seem like this was a dumping ground for some of the conceptual content that had been created while doing some world-building. After about the first quarter of the book, the threads come together and the story really gets going. Strung together like this, the book is like three novels in one. I could see the author having stretched those out into 1 or even 2 more books (after all, this is the longest of the three novels), but I'm thankful it all wrapped up here.

Whereas the first two novels spent a lot of time building up to their point, as in the concept of the Dark Forest in the second novel, this one essentially hurls concepts at you one after another as if you're in a batting cage. It makes for a fun but sometimes bewildering ride and may not be for everyone. Still, this has Cixin Liu's signature high-concept, big universe ideas in it and it is fun to work through them with his story-telling of this expanding universe as we come to know about more than just the Trisolarans.

A couple of the concepts reminded me of the Priscilla Hutchins series by Jack McDevitt, which I also greatly enjoyed for its whole "the Universe is a lot bigger than you think, kid" way of story-telling.

PeterB reviewed Death's End by Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #03)

Review of "Death's End" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

As you can see by my rating, I think this was the perfect end to the trilogy.

In this last part, Liu Cixin writes the story of what happens after a truce has been established with an alien race set on invading earth. Let's just say they didn't live happily ever after. Or maybe they did. In some strange way. It's up to you to decide.

One thing I loved about the series is that each of the books is really a completely different book. The story is somehow completely different, yet it is a perfect continuation of the previous one (if you want to read the books, you should definitely read them in order)

If there would be one thing to annoy me, it is the men/women stereotype that is used throughout the book. Men are the strong fighters while women are the caring mothers. I usually don't notice …

Norman reviewed El fin de la muerte (Trilogía de los Tres Cuerpos, #3) by Cixin Liu

Review of 'El fin de la muerte (Trilogía de los Tres Cuerpos, #3)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I was going to be bitter about the protagonist and the love story but... I mean, humanity is about that: feeling joy, love, despair. It is consistent with our spirit. The stuff that makes us what we are.

It is imaginative, clever, a little on the nose sometimes, but entertaining as hell. I couldn't drop this book until i had finished it, and it is a long book.

I don't know why the author's affection with some mean or disturbed human beings, but as I wrote above, I think it shows all of the human race's drive: live, progress, conquer, understand nature, the space, ourselves.

There are so many things that I didn't like, but it would felt like trying too hard to focus on a maybe negative subjective part of an already great tale.

Trae reviewed Death's End by Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #03)

Review of "Death's End" on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Ugh...so much about this book. It was like Liu was afraid he would not get another book deal, so he stuff it so full of stuff that it hardly holds a coherent thread. The story is epic, covering a ton of time. Expansive, yes...but it was like reading a heart beat monitor. It would pull you up on a topic, reaching for higher and higher potential...then just out of nowhere the bottom would drop out. And that topic would never be addressed again (if maybe only glancing later on). It is so frustrating that the series ends on this, I loved Three-Body, and Dark Forest grew on me despite it's flaws...but this was just a plodding mess of a gathering of words.