MixedThe Los Angeles Times\"... It’s a dangerous universe out there, Liu argues, and a global social welfare state may not be equipped to deal with it. Such ideas make Liu’s books compelling reading, and Death’s End is the most mind-bending of them all ... Yet as a novelist Liu has weaknesses that are impossible to ignore: These characters are exclusively men. Liu’s women, in contrast, tend to be nurturing, sentimental and weak ... Although the books are full of thrilling ideas and scenarios, the characters are little more than cutouts, with gender stereotypes providing the most obvious pattern. This is an unforgivable defect, since science fiction long ago progressed beyond simplistic tales of macho warriors in space. Even with its flaws, however, Liu’s picture of humanity’s place in the cosmos is among the biggest, boldest and most disturbing we’ve seen.\
China Miéville
PanThe Los Angeles TimesThis is a fun scenario, and Miéville grounds his story in an intricate web of real world references, which are explained at length in endnotes. But as a work of fiction the novel remains flat...The narrative proceeds artificially from crisis to crisis, without an impression of cause and effect. It often seems that things happen just so Miéville can show off another bit of art historical lore ... The biggest problem with The Last Days of New Paris is that for a book about surrealism, it fails to feel surreal ... [It] comes across as an elaborate thought experiment, rather than a compelling fiction.
