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.