Ms. Hen reviews The Dark Forest

 

The Dark Forest

Cinxin Liu

Tor Book

2008, 2015

Translated by Joel Martinsen

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she read the first novel in this series, THE THREE BODY PROBLEM. She liked that book so much that she had to find out what happened next.

This novel takes place after the last one, but with some different characters. The people on Earth are preparing for the Trisolarans to come. They prepare a special task force, people called Wallfacers, to help deal with the crisis. People from our current day go into hibernation in order to be involved in the Trisolaran battles when they reach Earth. The novel speeds ahead to the future where not everything is what the people from the past envisioned it to be. 

In the future, most people live underground, and do not have to have jobs. They live in houses that hang from trees, and wear clothes that light up with pictures. Energy comes from everything, all the people have to do is touch a wall, and they are connected to the internet. Even so, in this era, not everything is perfect. Humans are still humans, and they live according to their own rules.

This novel, similar to the last one, is heavy with science, which made Ms. Hen's eyes cross. But there are elements of romance, and mystery, and fantasy which made Ms. Hen happy. The character Luo Ji creates a fantasy woman and she becomes real. He also has people trying to kill him, and we don't find out why until the end.

Ms. Hen thinks there's a possibility this novel wouldn't be written this way if it were American. Americans are incessantly optimistic, and the Chinese view is not. Americans think that the world can be wonderful, and discovering new life on other planets is exciting, but the attitude from the Chinese point of view in this novel is one of bleakness and disenchantment. Ms. Hen thinks it's difficult to look at the world that way, but she's not sure which way is better.

This is a very dense novel, and it took a long time to read. Ms. Hen wants to read the third novel in the series, but she thinks she's going to wait a little bit, since this book is so intense. It's difficult reading about the possible end of humanity, but Ms. Hen likes to know what authors imagine, because there could be some small element of reality to the ideas that writers produce, and she wants to be ready for anything.

Ms. Hen reviews How High We Go In The Dark

 

How High We Go In The Dark

Sequoia Nagamatsu

Harper Collins

2022

Ms. Hen had been meaning to read this book for a while, but for a long time, it was unavailable at the library. She finally checked it out, and she thinks this is a book worth waiting for.

This is a novel in stories about a plague that comes from the Arctic from a girl scientists find who has has been buried under ice for thousands of years. The plague takes over the world, and millions of people die, and the world changes. Ms. Hen read the different stories about characters who are affected by the plague: the man whose daughter discovered the body in Siberia, someone who works at an amusement park which is a place for euthanizing infected children, and a man who creates a pig who can talk.

This book travels through the years, and into the future when the plague changes history. Characters even travel to space to find a new planet to inhabit. A lot of depressed characters dwell in these pages, and Ms. Hen feels sorry for a lot of them.

Ms. Hen is charmed by this novel, and she didn't want it to end. She has read a lot of books like this lately, like THE THREE BODY PROBLEM, THE HIDDEN GIRL AND OTHER STORIES, and EXHALATION. She seems to be gravitating to science fiction by Asian men, maybe that's a phase for her, but she's not sure. It's just that all of these books are so good that she can't get enough. They're just what she wants right now.

Even though this novel is about a pandemic, it was inspired before COVID happened. Ms. Hen think that pandemics have always been around, and have sparked ideas for writers. People suffering are always more interesting than those that are content.

Ms. Hen read in the acknowledgements in this book that the author was partly inspired by STAR TREK. Ms. Hen does not read that a lot in author notes, and she's glad this one is honest. A lot of writers want their fans to think they're highbrow, and have only read the best books, but Ms. Hen thinks that STAR TREK can be as inspirational as any classic novel.

Ms. Hen recommends that you run, not walk, to get this novel, by bookstore or library, or wherever you acquire books. She thinks this is one of the best books she's read this year. It's not a light summer book, but Ms. Hen doesn't believe in those anyway 😀