A review by marsius
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

5.0

EDIT: I just finished Death's End and immediately felt like I had to revise my rating of The Dark Forest to five stars. Yes, the quibbles below remain, but as part of a greater whole it's an achievement. Moreover, as I've thought about it, this was my first exposure to "dark forest theory" as an entirely developed concept. Some, like Hawking, touched on it, but I can't recall ever having come across it as a unified whole before reading it here. In retrospect, The Dark Forest deserved five stars almost for that alone.

The end came kind of out of nowhere and after the breathless chapters before, it almost seemed a bit of a letdown. I’d also have appreciated more world building. Even so, the premise remains entirely novel, and the dialogue is more natural than in the Three Body Problem.