Carmen’s Reviews > Death's End > Status Update

Wow, this was quite a poignant ending, harkening back to the sadness of the four-dimensional bubbles from what feels like forever ago. This ending almost seems trivial after the long and difficult journey but it speaks to perseverance (and perhaps luck) against all odds. Cheng Xin is very much the personification of humanity's hopes and the memories she left behind tells that tale, mistakes and all.

Yifan's words regarding Cheng Xin's decisions are reassuring. It seems like everything is changing so fast now as opposed to how it felt in the rest of the book, how humanity stumbled along its precarious path to survival. It's also like humanity has now narrowed down to this singular spaceship despite having reached farther out into the universe. What will they see/encounter when they awake?

Ahhh so that was the meaning behind Tianming's paintings!! How absolutely frightful. Also, the Black Domain project and lightspeed travel were linked! Not a fan of how Cheng Xin ends up making all of the the wrong decisions by following her idealism, but she still wins by surviving. And I do prefer her ideology over those who would plow ahead regardless of costs. It's a shame her characterization suffers.

Interest in the rest of the book has picked up with this small chapter from an entirely different sentient being, although it's kind of grating to see binary gender still in play here. It's frightening and awe-inspiring how easy technology appears from this end.

Tianming's stories were interesting. Some nuance might've been lost in translation but the layered metaphors were effective and it certainly helps that the discoveries are explained. Feeling the slog of the length of this book at this point.

The options so far for dark forest survival are so depressing. They make sense, which is the worst part. Well, considering that I'm only halfway through and that Yun Tianming has shown up again, I imagine that we do come up with a solution somehow.

I should add that I wish the creepy bit of Gravity's secondary transmission controller monitor and his voyeurism was omitted. Like ugh gross I'm glad he had to experience a dislocated heart.

What a comeback! Four-dimensional space was very cool although the puddle dissipation is worrying, and I wish there was more that could be explored there. I guess I've mostly accepted the consequences of the space mental seal for Blue Space at this point... it's hard to justify not doing what they had to do to survive. Still creepy though.

Welp, another low point for humanity. It seems like we're revisiting totalitarianism and cannibalism under the reign of the Trisolarians and they haven't even arrived yet.

Have the members of Gravity travelled out far enough to encounter another form of life? Is that what this odd interference is? In other news, ughhh I get the human factors that led to Swordholder Cheng Xin but that her degree of deterrence was 10%?! Did they not publish these deterrence levels? It's way too much of a difference to be dismissed.