The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu

ISBN: 9781784971618
Amazon ID: B00U7G0UYI

This is the second book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.

I think it's the first book I've read where I've found the (reasonably short) Prologue pretty heavy going.

It is also very clearly the second part of a trilogy. It would make no sense at all if you started reading this without having read The Three Body Problem first.

Finally, several of the chapters are enormous. Chapter 1 of Part I starts on page 18, and chapter 2 starts on page 95 (77 pages later). Chapter 1 of Part III starts on page 258, and chapter 2 starts on page 414 (156 pages later). For a 430 page book, those are quite some big chapters (18% and 36% of the book, respectively).

The book starts out with a certain amount of Chinese politics and ideology, although thankfully nothing like as much as in The Three Body Problem. It takes quite a while (25% or so) to get to what I assume is going to be the main theme of the book, and it would appear that the story is going to have even less to do with maths, physics, and the 3-body problem itself than the first book did. It's currently not boding well for encouraging me to go on to the third book.

Once you do get into Part II, however, the story does get adequately interesting. Still certainly no science fiction, no maths, no physics, but interesting as a storyline nonetheless. It's basically philosophy and speculation; interesting to think about, but not really anything in the way of action, and certainly nothing you'd call science fiction.

Part III kicks in on page 257 of 430, with the biggest chapter in the book - 156 pages, 36% of the entire text. It's tough going in the end.

As you get into this enormous chapter, things happen. Not especially exciting things, and not the sort of things you might expect to be finding yourself reading about when you first learned that the theme of the book was "Earth is going to be attacked by aliens". Basically, it's just more philosophical discussion and social commentary.

It might make you think, but it's not science fiction.

Once you get to the end of this vast stretch of writing, you get a welcome sense of relief, because there isn't much book left after that. Indeed, once you finish the entire book, it feels like you've climbed a decent-sized mountain and arrived at the pub at the top, which has excellent food. Your sense of achievement is not so much because you climbed the mountain, but because you can now enjoy the food and drink.

I definitely cannot recommend reading this. It has a decent ending, which makes it quite satisfying to decide not to read book three, but your time is far better spent on something with a story to it, which goes somewhere.

The Prologue contains the sentence "Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places", which I think is complete rubbish. I can stand at the top of a hill, or go up a man-made tower, and appreciate the view (and possibly the artistry of construction, in the case of the tower), without having to be afraid of heights. In fact, being afraid of standing where you are is in my opinion quite likely to distract you somewhat from enjoying it.

Later in the book someone asks "Is steadfast faith not built upon science and reason? No faith is solid that is not founded on objective fact." This, to me, sounds like the exact opposite of a definition of faith. Faith is something which enables you to believe things which are specifically not based on facts. Believing things which are based on facts requires only logic and understanding, not faith.

An object is approaching Earth at 75 kilometres per second. It "passed lunar orbit without slowing. At this rate it would reach Earth in just half an hour".

Hm, let's just check that… The moon is 400,000 km from Earth. 400,000 km @ 75 km / sec = 5333 seconds = 1½ hours.

Oops.

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