Okay y’all, this one was a real slog for me. I started it, got halfway through, and then had to completely restart it from the beginning. The Dark Forest picks up relatively soon after the The Three-Body Problem’s ending once Luo Ji is announced as one of the four Wallfacers in the project of the same name. The Trisolarans have sent advanced technology called Sophons ahead of them to Earth’s surface to collect information on its inhabitants. Humans cannot record or relay information without the Sophons knowing about it. Their critical flaw? They cannot read minds or understand the concept of deceit. And thus, the Wallfacer project was born: four humans are selected (seemingly at random, in the case of Luo Ji) to develop plans to save Earth and humanity. They’re given endless resources to ensure their plans come to fruition, and no one is to know of their plans or to question their actions - humanity is at stake, after all.

We follow Luo Ji for the entire second book: he putters around for most of the first part, and we eventually witness the downfall of the other 3 Wallfacers while Luo Ji remains alive through everything. In the end, after a couple of centuries of hibernation and rejoining society at different points in time, Luo Ji comes up with a plan to successfully foster peace between Earth and the Trisolarans.

I struggled getting through this one because the scientific terminology was often so far above my head - I definitely lost the thread more than once. It didn’t help me, personally, that the structure of the book wasn’t committed to “standard” chapter breakdowns. Each part had a handful of chapters that were dozens of pages long, with breaks only indicated by extra spacing. It was difficult for my brain to stop in the middle of “chapters” when there was no resolution between page breaks and it would take several reading sessions for me to finish each chapter. I ended up listening to the audiobook for the most part, just to complete it. Overall, I felt the often-natural second book slump with this installment, but with the excellent ending, I’m reinvigorated to start the third and final book. I’m just hoping it’s a little more fast-paced.