...a trilogy that belongs in the pantheon with the greatest works of Arthur C. Clarke, one of Liu's self-declared precursors. Liu offers brain-busting thrills for the reader who thrives on hard-science speculation, but has plenty of love for the troubled human conscience, too ... I recommend it to you.
...as expansive a narrative as any I’ve ever read ... Death’s End is so stupidly full of electrifying ideas that a good many of them are roundly erased mere pages after they’ve been raised...That said, some of Death’s End‘s overabundance of substance rather drags ... Ultimately, it’s the ideas Cixin Liu tends to in Death’s End that are going to grab you, rather than its protagonist. It’s the incredible ambition of this book that you’re going to write home about, as opposed to its fleeting focus on the minor moments. And that’s...disappointing, I dare say. But it’s nowhere near a deal-breaker.
As trilogy-cappers go, it's satisfying — entirely on its own terms, though. Like the two installments before it, Death's End focuses on a different protagonist ... Within this intricately structured, staggeringly cosmic, reality-contorting framework, he weaves all the personal and philosophical conflicts he's seeded along the way into a resoundingly orchestrated finale ... Unfortunately, a few of the flaws of the first two books are ported into Death's End. Liu's exposition can get downright leaden, especially when there are reams of scientific jargon and theory to be delivered to the reader.
... 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.
