Death’s End by Cixin Liu: An Unhinged Review

Death’s End by Cixin Liu is the book I chose to read for prompt #2 of the 2024 Asian Readathon—read a book that feels timeless. This is the last book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, I had read the first two books—The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest—earlier this year, but due to the heavy subject matter of the books I had put off reading the third book for a while. Seriously, the cosmic horror that this series evokes is like no other. You feel like pausing for breath after every few chapters of this series, but at the same time there is a burning curiosity to know what happens next. Since I meant to read the third book eventually anyway, it seemed like a good idea to incorporate it into the Asian Readathon.

If you have not read the previous two books into the trilogy, what are you doing? With your life? On this page? Go, shoo, read them now, prepare to have your mind blown.

If you have read them, or if you insist on knowing about the last book in this saga like a chaotically evil person—Death’s End narrates the story of humanity and its relationship with the rest of the cosmos. That’s the easiest way one can put it. But that is like saying the Mahabharata is the story of a feud between families, or that the Bible is about the humans’ relationship with their creator. All of those are true statements, but laughably one-dimensional (pun very much intended, if you know you know).

Like the previous books, it is hard to summarize or say anything about the plot of the book without going into full spoilers. There will be mild spoilers sprinkled in this review because otherwise writing this is impossible. Full disclosure, I finished reading the book literally ten minutes ago as I write this, so this review is going to be—as the title suggests—unhinged and quite possibly non-linear which I think fits the theme, don’t you? Hopefully by the end, this review will make you feel a tenth of the disorientation I am feeling after reading this book.

Unlike the first two books that followed a more or less linear continuity narrating the events that led up to humanity establishing contact with the Trisolarans and the subsequent crisis and how a few characters dealt with it ending with the humans successfully deterring the Trisolaran invasion, Death’s End takes us back to the beginning of when it all started. It follows primarily one woman, Cheng Xin, from the early days of Crisis Era (when the Trisolaran Threat began) and the role she played in the fate of the universe.

The novel covers a duration of billions of years and traces different eras of existence through the eyes of Cheng Xin, mostly, and a rotating cast of people around her. Three other characters deserve special mention here, who had significant time devoted to them—Thomas Wade, Xin’s superior who often acts as a foil to her characters; AA, Xin’s assistant and close friend who handles a lot of her business and daily affairs for her; and Yun Tianming, the man who loved Cheng Xin from afar since their days as college classmates. It is Tianming’s perspective we get before even Xin’s in the novel. He ends up buying a star for Cheng Xin in the early days of the Crisis Era, and in terms of impact, probably has as much effect on humanity’s course of events as Cheng Xin herself.

Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming are positioned as star-crossed lovers in this novel, in the true sense of the word. There can be no other pair more star-crossed than these two—they own this term now, I’m sorry I don’t make the rules. Their love story spans the entirety of the novel as a fringe story to the larger narrative, and is so incredibly tragic that if I stopped to think about it, it will end me.

I will not spend much time narrating the events of the novel as that is futile in a story of this size. Overall, the experience of reading this book was so strange. It is over 700+ pages long and crosses vast swaths of time, that I feel like I didn’t just read a book, I existed in a timelapse of a universe for a month. The places this story went—dear reader, it was like walking on foot across the earth’s mountains, plains and rivers. The venture and concept of this novel are so grandiose, I feel like that is its only failing. The sheer grandiosity it attempted to cover sometimes weighed it down. The prose occassionally meanders execessively over phenomenon or scientific concepts that seems overdrawn out and boring. But then, this is not a traditional story.

If you expect a clear plot and conflict, stop reading. Reading and appreciating this book requires a massive perspective shift. You need to read this as a commentary, a treatise on existence within the universe, and not the story of single person or even a single race. It took me reading the entire book to realise this and for most readers, it will be the same which makes this an excellent book to reread. Every reread will give new value.

Initially, up until the last few chapters of the book, I was reading this with those preconceived expectations in mind—following a character, a conflict. And I sensed some sexism in the way the story was being told. It seemed like conventionally masculine characters and traits were being highlighted as better suited to save the world, and the conventionally feminine was being depicted as only making mistakes, being naive, and steering humanity wrong. Luo Ji and Ye Wenjie are also good examples of this. The only time a feminine character was shown as powerful and badass was when she was a villain—so powerful women are bad? These thoughts persisted in me until the very end of the book, and it is what I thought was being endorsed in the story.

But, I have since changed my mind. It is undeniable that there are some stereotypes maintained in the trilogy, but they are forgivable in light of the story that the author is trying to tell. After finishing Death’s End, I think I was mistaken in my analysis of perceived sexism. It is not that the story endorses a certain kind of masculinity and disaprages femininity—quite the opposite. Only if you approach the story with conventional plot expectations will it seem to be so, as it seemed to me at first. Once you reach the end, you realise that the story in reality highlights a message of change—saying that we need to change our approach to one of hope, kindness and love, if we are to survive and ensure the universe does not end. Because the existing methods, all the theories laid out in the last two books, ensure our and the universe’s death ultimately.

In putting forward this message, the story also critiques its readers who will inevitably blame Cheng Xin and reach the same conclusions about gender as I did—saying that ‘THIS is the precise mindset we need to change—you think those manly men were saving the world? If Cheng Xin had not made mistakes, everything would be okay? If she were more like the men in the book, it would be okay? You are wrong! She was right all along! It is the universe that was wrong.”

This trilogy, especially this last book, gives me the same vibe as RM’s new album that just released a few days ago—’Right Place, Wrong Person’. It highlights a similar message of being the right person in a wrong place or a wrong person in a right place and feeling lost and disconnected as a result. And isn’t Cheng Xin’s story exactly that in the end? She is a hopepunk character placed in a sci-fi horror story.

This novel has everything—history, mythology, sci-fi grandiosity, cosmic horror, fairytales??? And excellent re-read value. One thing that I found amusing was that the first two books in this trilogy felt very self-contained. As in, you could read the first book and not read the others and it still felt like a complete story. You could read the first two books and end it there, without feeling the need to continue the story. However, in this third book, when it ends it does so abruptly that it comes as a bit of a shock. After I finished it, I was like “WHAT?! That’s it? Where is the rest??!!”

I did not feel like this with the other two books, and yet, ironically, I felt like this with the last book—the one meant to be the ending to the trilogy. Another thing I found funny was that during the time when Trisolarans were preparing to invade Earth and were relocating humans, they only allocated one continent on Earth to human settlements and it was Australia??!! Like Australia is so wild that they saw it and were like “Nah, you guys can keep that one.”

There is so much, so much to discuss in this book. I could spend a whole week talking about it and going over every plot point with a fine-toothed comb. But unfortunately, I don’t have that space here to rant endlessly. So, we have to end it at some point. I imagine that is how Cixin Liu felt writing the book too.

The first book was a brief glimpse into all that would come—cosmic horror, alien invasion, hopepunk. The second book was more like a traditional story but still enormous in its endeavour—the story of humanity’s struggle against Trisolarans as well as their realization of the nature of the universe they existed in. This third book then carefully tears down everything that came before. It is vastly different from the two that precede it, and yet the perfect progression of it.

Overall, I love it. It is grand and beautiful and makes you feel insignificant and incosequential, yet a part of something greater than yourself. It is also tragic and horrific and mindblowingly insane in terms of the places it goes to. If you love science-fiction, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and/or want to have your life and perception turned upside-down, please read this book. Be aware of trigger warnings before you begin reading and enjoy the ride.