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.