111 Book Review: Death’s End (死神永生)

Bryce W. Merkl Sasaki
Eleventy-One
Published in
1 min readJun 17, 2021
Eleventy-One Book Review of Death’s End (死神永生) by Liu Cixin
Who is this mysterious white man floating through space?, you ask yourself, looking at this cover, never to find out the answer.

Death’s End (死神永生)

by Liu Cixin (Translated by Ken Liu)

In wrapping up the Three-Body trilogy, Liu Cixin must have had two epiphanies:

First, he still wanted to write about 15 different hard science fiction concepts he hadn’t yet covered in the first two books. Instead of writing more books, he retconned and shoehorned all of these amazing standalone scifi concepts all into this last book, which feels…mediocre?

Second, he wanted to write a strong female lead…psyche! Cheng Xin is actually a human potato escorted across time and space entirely by the choices of others. The two times she decides something for herself, her passivity dooms humanity forever (twice!).

I enjoyed this book, but it’s the weakest in the trilogy.

TL;DR: Human potato witnesses the end of the universe by literally sleeping through it. Others get to do the cool stuff mostly offscreen.

My rating: 7 out of 11 Eras, Which Is An Extremely Common Word Everyone Uses All The Time Everywhere

Get it here:

Oh, you liked it? Well then, try: The Three-Body Problem (if you haven’t already), Ender’s Game (for, you know, aliens)

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