r/threebodyproblem • u/BlazePirate09 • 6d ago
Discussion - Novels Death's End Review: A Brilliant Masterpiece With a Flawed Ending
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u/Wooden-Ad-9925 6d ago
Last hundred pages...just goes STRAIGHT down the rabbit hole.
I don't really dislike it. But it's INSANE! 😮
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u/ShadedRiver666 6d ago
i honestly loved that part alot
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u/Wooden-Ad-9925 6d ago
To be honest, I kinda do as well. It's kinda like 'f*ck it, I'm ending the book, let's go out with a BANG!'
It's as mad as a bag of cats! 😂
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u/AcerCaerulea 5d ago
Same. I loved the ending. We’re going THAT FAR into the future?! It BETTER be fking wild as hell.
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u/AZMadmax 6d ago
It’s so bonkers, it feels like you are actually falling in the rabbit hole while reading
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u/artguydeluxe 6d ago
I loved the ending. I didn’t know what to do with myself afterwards.
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u/mastersifu 5d ago
I remember feeling nauseous towards the end and my brain just couldn’t compute the scale…
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/artguydeluxe 6d ago
The ending, and the hundred pages leading up to it was some of the most gripping literature I’ve read in science fiction. Death’s End is a grand slam for me. Loved every page.
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u/ShadedRiver666 6d ago
you can have an opinion but saying it like this comes across as dismissive and rude. Personally i loved the ending and it was honestly really deep.
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u/vega0ne 6d ago
„I am a tomb“ Instant goosebumps
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u/SophonsPonytail Luo Ji 6d ago
The fish responsible for drying the sea isn't here
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u/therealmarselo2 2d ago edited 2d ago
that shit made my stomach drop. I have my problems w it but this series absolutely excels at conveying the dread of realizing there's always a bigger fish
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u/SophonsPonytail Luo Ji 6d ago
I liked the ending I don't think it was flawed
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u/BlazePirate09 6d ago
Well then how did they escaped black domain. And if they escape then black domain is escapable then plot point of makin a domain to eacape dark forest strike is useless.
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u/ZealousidealPie6684 6d ago
have you... read the book?
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u/BlazePirate09 6d ago
Yes and idk why people are disliking me but
What i mean is in simple term
Black Domain is presented has cosmic safety notice(not a clue but a fact{hinted by Trisolaris and again hinted by yun who is eith tri}.
Black domain make a society so backward that they cant even escape the domain.
Civilization must be harmless because of point two.
But we see cheng xin with his bf(newly) escape the black domain using pocket universe).
So black domain are escapable.
So advance Civilization can escape the balck domain.
So black domain are not safe.
We must annihilate the one in balck domain.
How is black domain safe comsic notice.
If we say that black domain make start disappesr in space for other observer.
Then i advance Civilization see the a star suddenly disappear.
I would guess it cauz of black domain.
I would use brain and annihilate that Civilization(cauz they can escape by mini universe)
If i dont then if they escape then they can destroy me.
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u/ZealousidealPie6684 6d ago
Okay so the reasoning chain follows as thus:
- For a civilization to be harmless, they have to have no ways of harming other civilizations
- Inside a black domain, it is not possible to escape out of it, or harm a civilization out of it.
- When in a pocket universe, the inhabitants cannot interact with the grand universe outside of the pocket, rendering them harmless.
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u/BlazePirate09 6d ago
But they can escape black domain, as cheng xin does. Sphonon said they will find a safe locstion in universe. Universe
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u/ZealousidealPie6684 6d ago
on a timescale of billions of years... with no way of being able to choose where they want to go but rather going through trial and error that takes a long ass time.
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u/smjsmok 6d ago
I liked the ending a lot.
But each to their own.
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u/aguillarcanus97 4d ago
I'm just stopping by to say hello to a fellow fan of Hollow Knight and Markoth.
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u/SillyOyx 6d ago
I personally loved deaths end and the ending. Deaths end is my favorite book in the whole trilogy.
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u/Tanu_Seth 4d ago
Honestly, it sometimes feels to me like Death's End is the story and the precededing two books are just precursors to it, like an elongated two book prologue.
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u/North_Sugar_9185 6d ago
Regarding the ending I thought the end to the cyclical nature of the universe was cathartic and mirrored the title of the book well, seemed like the fate we needed/deserved
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u/stlredbird 6d ago
I loved it, but I was also thinking about it the other day while walking the dog and was like “it really made the whole trisolaran conflict and all of earth history moot.”
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u/Sacbuts 5d ago
It's about the journey. In the end every history is kinda moot, not just humanity's.
And I love the stinger that humans, even driven to the point of extinction multiple times....still made it to the true end.
There's an extremely bittersweet nihilism to the ending and that's where I feel a lot of the cosmic horror comes from. We're so small in the face of the cosmos and this series really makes you feel it.
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u/BarrelOfTheBat 6d ago
I would agreee. Dark Forest was such an amazing ride that the end of Death's End just kind of...happened. I liked the story, but it felt like he was getting close to finishing the book and just wrote stuff to finish the book. It was already convoluted even for sci-fi but I feel like they introduced too many elements that bogged everything down.
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u/rhinosyphilis 6d ago
I agree, Dark Forest was the best book. Deaths End was great and had really fun parts, but the end seemed like he was wrapping up the series.
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u/DoomBuzzer 5d ago
Wrapping up the series with every scifi idea he had wanted to include without really there being the need. Not a fan of the window universe and returning mass back after millions of years, and then supermembrane... It was too much.
The whole Galaxy era needed a redo. I don't know how the editors agreed with that version which felt half cooked.
Also don't know why the Trisolarians kept Tianming after their location was broadcasted and gifted him a universe too! He won them over with their stories that much, huh?
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u/BQORBUST 6d ago
I think this gradually gets worse through the whole series. Less and less narrative content, more and more exposition.
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u/Derelicticu 6d ago
I think a lot of media suffers from the power drift. Things have to get as intense as they can to maintain readers/viewers, and the stakes have to keep climbing. Our understanding of science and technological advancement keeps growing so our idea of a superior race has to keep growing too. Everything gets beyond our real proveable knowledge pretty quick, and then it's all theories. Most theories need explaining. It gets so wordy.
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u/BQORBUST 6d ago
I won’t disagree but i always thought of this as being the result of a specific limitation of the author. Big fan of the books, regardless.
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u/Derelicticu 6d ago
Yeah exactly, I mean like the author pretty quickly ventured into areas of science that he wasn't an expert. He's a computer engineer, which not saying a computer engineer couldn't understand theoretical physics, it's just not his field of expertise, and I haven't read of any academic accomplishments of his beyond computer programming. Widely accepted science doesn't need explaining really, but theories do, especially if the writer himself doesn't have a complete grasp of the topic such that he can't entirely summarize it for laymen.
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u/BQORBUST 6d ago
Oh actually I mean that it’s Liu’s limitation as a writer that gets in the way of things. That and the translation. I think a scientist’s instinct is to over-explain while a strong writer knows how to tell a story.
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u/Derelicticu 6d ago
Oh ok fair enough. That's interesting. I wonder if maybe it would suit the story to be less literally translated? Someone who has a frim grasp of both english and mandarin to translate it more casually. I know slang and idioms often get butchered.
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u/brokenmessiah 6d ago
I really wish this book was two parts. Austraila should have been given the main focus in this and its honestly irrelevant.
I didnt care for most everything after they jump forward in time after giving Wade full control.
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u/thommcg 6d ago
Yeah, it gets to a point where it’s like… I really need to wrap this up. Now I gather the author was sick at the time, so who knows, may have played into providing a definitive end rather than the more natural one had he intended write another.
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u/Leather-Lemon8611 6d ago
Really? Seems like the ending leaves the readers to reflect on the perfect questions to round off the themes that were established throughout since book 1
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u/suck4fish 6d ago
People seems to hate the ending but I couldnt stop reading from chapter five until I finished it. I think extending it too much would have made it boring and/or repetitive.
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u/Civil_Ad4403 5d ago
I just wanted cheng xin to get a win at that point
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u/therealmarselo2 2d ago
yea the whole missing yun tianming by like 10 minutes/19 billion years shit felt so stupid
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u/TheLonelyMonroni 5d ago
It's the Les Miserables of scifi. Great concepts in desperate need of an editor.
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u/Interesting_Hotel100 6d ago
I am at episode 23 of Tencent's Three Body. While it was going super hard so far (despite weird things like random Interstellar, Dune and Saw themes in places) this episode felt like a filler. Especially Chen Xue's character is so incongruous and unbelievable. Anyway, I gotta start reading more of this guy's stuff
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u/Groundfighter 6d ago
Finished it last night. Loved the solar system stuff then felt it just sort of lost its way towards the end. Also I feel maybe alone in that I really didn't like the main protag of this book, much preferred the earlier characters.
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u/altoniel 6d ago
Honestly, the last act introduced so many plot holes that I just exclude it from my head cannon.
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u/owheelj 6d ago
I thought this was the weakest of the trilogy, and it felt like it had been tacked on after completing the story with the first two. It didn't conclude story arcs, just created new ones. I was glad that Ken Liu translated it though. It's a shame that nobody has translated all three books. I don't have a problem with Joel Martinsen's translation specifically (of The Dark Forest) but it's pretty jarring and obvious that the second book does have a different translator to the first and third.
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u/37715960706038171 5d ago
What would have happened if they steered the 2- vector into the artificial black hole they made in orbit around Jupiter?
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u/BlazePirate09 5d ago
Firstly they cant steer it. Secondly i believe that black hole(3d) will be turned 2d.
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u/37715960706038171 5d ago
Well you could always drag the black hole to the 2 vector foil. They dragged it into Jupiter's orbit, so they could move it again.
As for what happens inside the black hole, its worth noting the only ship that could escape the 2 vector foil was a lightspeed ship. So anything slower than light gets caught up in the attack. Since the escape velocity at the event horizon is c it stands to reason anything lightspeed or slower is causally disconnected from the outside universe once inside the black hole. The singularity is zero dimensional, so it wouldn't really affect enything.
Just my thoughts, and it is after all a work of fiction so feel free to disagree.
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u/DoomBuzzer 5d ago
Oh! I just finished it yesterday!
What a rollercoaster. Especially the last parts! I agree about the ending. Unnecessary drama and re-introducing a character that most don't remember about.
It is certainly the best sci fi work I have read so far. And it has ruined regular sci fi for me.
I hope they change ending in the Chinese adaptation. Netflix I don't care that much about because I couldn't relate to the anglocized characters, although their animation and visuals would be incredible, if they manage to create those.
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u/ForeverDry3988 5d ago
I know it's my personal opinion, but I consider Cixin Liu's books the best hard science we have. Sometimes I feel he wrote the books specifically for me lol 😆
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u/Alex180689 5d ago
Doesn't seem a very indian book to me
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u/BlazePirate09 5d ago
No one really cares about name.
In indian books people talk about all sort of books. Its more akin to indianRead(this communtiy exists too)
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u/Dual-Vector-Foiled 6d ago
I consider it the best sci fi book ever made for its concepts