Book: The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu, Joel Martinsen

Book two in what is often described as The Three Body Series accelerates the story of the Trisolarians apparent invasion of Earth, covering the response of the latter over a range of centuries after the crisis first began. The real novelty here is the use of time - the distances being so great allows the author to play with time. This also allowed a bit more liberty taking than I liked, but the book's story was strong enough to see it through. Criticisms are easy to spot in the characters, but then it seems that Three Body was never about individuals but more about societies - and those spanning galaxies.

The ending was also problematic in its terseness and rushing, which really cheapened and undermined the rest of the book for me. On the positive side the volume did manage to stand on its own two feet - this is a genuine trilogy and not a single book split into three parts.

There was just enough to keep me going here, and so on we go to book three.