I really enjoyed this book! I think it did a really amazing job of combining the beauty and danger of a truly wild space that is unable to be "conquered" or understood by humanity. There was so much suspense throughout the entire book that I felt the same obsessive desire to know more as the main character. The pacing was slow, but I think it was a good fit for this story. There's so much more I want to know about this world and I'm sure I'll be thinking about this book for a while after I've finished it.

I really love Murderbot and everything to do with it, but I have to admit that this is likely the weakest novella in the series. It still has a lot of the charm and excellent characters that the series is great at, but the plot felt lacking compared to the rest. It didn’t feel like it was necessary in a way.

In particular, while every installment has its own localized plot, they all contribute heavily to the growth of Murderbot as a “person” and this one was kind of lacking in that regard. I felt like the strongest element that it had in that realm was Murderbot’s relationship with Three, but it was far from a primary element of the story and I really wish it was more central.

Overall, I still tore through the book and thoroughly enjoyed it for all of its usual Murderbot charm, but in comparison to the rest of the series it was missing some things.

Also, more ART please.

This was definitely the best in the series for me! I would argue that this books feels very similar in structure to The Dark Forest, but it is a huge improvement. It really took what I enjoyed about the series, the truly next level scientific concepts, and turned it up to 11. The massive jumps in time felt very reminiscent of the Foundation novels to me, where things were happening more on a macroscopic scale through time. Though there were actual characters moving through time with us, which felt more grounding compared to Foundation. Each era felt very distinct and helped the pacing of the book dramatically compared to The Dark Forest.

The book absolutely has its pitfalls however, and these are the same ones that appear in the previous books in the series. I really don't think the romantic subplots of any of the books, especially this one and The Dark Forest, work at all. They're both very cringey men who are "deeply in love" with women they've either never met or only interacted with a few times, and yet so much of their motivations are tied around that infatuation. And of course, the women naturally are somehow fall in love with them back. This is also part of a larger underlying misogyny problem with these books, where the women are innocent and weak-willed while the men are realistic and willing to do whatever it takes. The one exception is Ye Wenjie in The Three Body problem, who is a really great character but her strong will is used towards obviously amoral aims. I would argue that this is much less pronounced in Death's End than The Dark Forest, but its still an issue none the less.

Overall, this book is a wild roller coaster of emotions and ideas. I think the grand scope of the story really spoke to me, and the seemingly endless course of speculative science and discovery was fascinating. While it has its issues, I would say this book, and this series as a whole, is perfect for anyone interested in grand scientific ideas and some real nitty-gritty scientific exploration.