I finished this book over a week ago, and I'm just starting to get over it. I haven't been this moved by a story in some time, not just emotionally, but mentally as well.
Can't say anymore until moving on to the spoiler stage, but if you liked Macroscope or Rama, or any story that involves cosmic scales of time and space, you need this whole trilogy. Like the other books in this trilogy, characters are not especially strong or memorable, and there's a lot of exposition, but the sum is far greater than any weak parts.
*spoilers*
The book lets you know early and hard that you're in for a super long timeline. There isn't a table of contents - its a Table of Eras that extends millions of years into the future. I vaguely recall looking at the names of all these eras, wondering if I'm reading spoilers and should maybe quickly look away. I tried to mostly forget about it, but all through the book I found myself distracted about what's coming in the next era, so I don't think this should be shown to the reader right up front.
I'm concerned I've taken too long since the last book, but I get right back into it. I just have to try harder to recall all the Chinese names. Characters can be sometimes expressive and real, but drop into exposition mode for pages at a time, but I'm still into it.
It grabs me from page one, because it starts talking about history (fall of Constantinople) immediately. I also like that we go back and revisit the previous stories from a new perspective.
(Following are notes from certain pages, written as I was reading. I don't know if this has any value, and even as notes its not very useful. But this is a blog, so useful is not why we're here.)
p60
Was that a deliberate callback to Byzantium and swords?
p73
Just like that, title drop. Overall, I like the nonchalant way the author just lets the heaviest of things drop.
p79
I love the connections from the weird start of the story to the 'present' (i.e. brain extraction).
p98
The author has done this separating and reuniting act a few times now. You can see it coming from an eternity away but it still works for me every time.
End of Part 1.
p109
"under arrest for murder" I am so glad this is finally addressed. I was never comfortable with the idea that human survivors immediately turn on each other. I think even the author regrets that ham handed need to push a point at the expense of believable characters, and is trying to walk it back a bit.
p141
I've been looking forward to the meeting of the humans and Tri-Solarans for a long time. I'm actually glad the process is taking so long, with exchanges of information and AI meetings only so far. That the TS seem to like humanity so much, and be so cooperative, seems too good to be true. The TS seemed so ruthless up until now that I'm wondering if its not a way to put us off our guard so they can conquer us another way. But the TS supposedly don't know how to lie.
p169
Nice way to re-invent the Cold War, with bigger weapons and higher stakes. Maybe the TS will be better liars than we.
p175
Yep, just like that. Humanity defeated and reduced to a reservation in Australia. A second dark age (Great Ravine).
The other humans (away form Earth) offer a last chance at revenge... and suddenly we're in 4D space.
The descriptions are simple and great, quite believable that it could work this way.
p246
Feels like the first third of the book setup the new adventures in 4D.
p253
Again and again this story reminds me of Macroscope, just when you think you've gotten used to how the universe works, we shift to a higher level. Our universe is a dark forest. Now we move up a level to 4D space, and you move from one dark forest to another.
p262
Part 3
p270
Tri-Solaris dead. Will humans and TS ever meet? Will the author get to completely dodge ever having to describe them?
p287
Humanity in this story is written so it changes its mind so often it seems crazy; its nice of the author to admit this problem he's created.
p317
Weight. The author is facile at throwing around weight and making it look easy.
p351
Done with the 3 fairy tales.
p370
Double and single layer metaphors.
p391
Math questions determine who gets to go on the last ship. Guess I would be left behind on the doomed Earth.
p418
In most any sci-fi story humanity finally achieving light speed would be a victory. Here its yet another threat, like everything.
p436
Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
p446
The story of Gao Way, just another bead on a long string of tragedies. There's no way this book doesn't end with Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming together.
p465
Part 5
Cheng Xin's pacifism is unmovable, yet she still seems more like a person than a character or an idea.
p470 Cleansing and singing? Star-Pluckers?
Hide yourself well, cleanse well.
p498
Over and over, Cheng Xin's pacifism robs humanity of its weapons and defenses against near certain destruction, and yet humanity keeps surviving somehow. The message that there is no point in surviving if we have to compromise our humanity is not very convincing this way.
p525
The 2D death of the solar system and everything in it is more boring than surreal. I appreciate that the author must have spent a lot of time on research, but I feel frustration that the book will be over soon, and I just want to get it over with.
p530
Of course the Halo is capable of light speed. Of course it is, because there's still 1 cm of paper left in the book, so of course our protagonist can't just die with the Solar System.
p533
This is another point from the author, across all these stories, that I can not entirely believe, that all humans are so selfish all the time. Of course most are, but humans are also random enough that nothing they do is ever this consistent.
p535
I'm glad this hippy is finally mad. The past is littered with heroes who could have saved mankind, and Cheng Xin's stupidity doomed mankind over and over. She doesn't deserve to be amongst the last humans alive, let alone get anything like a happy ending. At the same time, its not fair to call her the greatest mass murder in history. Same end result though.
p539
"Halo flew at the speed of light toward the star that Yun Tianming had given Cheng Xin."
Just like that, I'm not even mad anymore. It feels like the whole story was leading up to the glory of this line.
p541
Part 6
p559
The Garden of Eden use to be 10 dimensional, with near instant light speed. Endless war is making our universe continually lose dimensions, and keeps reducing the speed of light. Now this is sci-fi.
p577
18 million years gone, like nothing.
p592
Over a hundred thousand languages discovered, representing survivors of the death of the universe... no, more - over a million!
p602
end
Whenever I near the finish line, I tend to break into a sprint, unfortunately making the conclusion more anti-climactic. But it still has quite an effect. After I put the book down I move about my world in a bit of daze, feeling mostly empty.
It's hard to top rebooting the universe, there's just not much more to say. Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming miss each other by only a few days, and a few billion years. This is one of the few ways you could top them actually meeting (storywise), but its still an emotional kick in the abdomen that leaves me breathless. And the carving in the stone... So many stories and tragedies hinted at, and long gone.
This Death's End trilogy is to Macroscope what Lord of the Rings is to The Hobbit.
2016.12.18
I finished reading earlier in the month (12/9 maybe), and I am now at the stage where I'm not thinking about the story every few hours, just maybe once a day.
I flip through the beginning of the book, and all the big points of the story are right there. The end of humanity, even the universe. The notion that the world, and the universe, looks the way it does is because of life, not despite it.
The excerpts from A Past Outside of Time, the book Cheng Xin writes at the end of the story, are interspersed, but they still sound a bit more like the author than the character. That's something I've been wrestling with over the whole book, and for days later - is Cheng Xin a real person, a real character, a placeholder, an ideal? There are far fewer moments when she feels real (early in the book) then when she doesn't (especially near the end).
I know, characters in a book serve a purpose, unlike real people, who don't have to make any sense at all. I feel like I got most everything out of the book that I was supposed to, but I can't reconcile Cheng Xin's extreme pacifism as being part of a real person/character, or just something to keep the wheels of the story on the track. There were times that her boss/rival/nemesis Wade felt like more of a real person, and he gets like 5 lines in the whole book. But I guess he was just an ideal also.
It might be interesting to read through the whole thing again, knowing how it will end. But not now, time to move on. I'm not sure how hard the sci-fi in this story was, but it feels like the bar has been raised. This will be a hard series to move on from. My next book or series should almost certainly be fantasy, to avoid any unfair comparisons.
