Death's End

by Cixin Liu · 2010

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, aerospace engineer Cheng Xin wakes from hibernation into the Deterrence Era, in which the threat of mutually-assured destruction between Earth and the Trisolaran invaders has kept an uneasy peace; she inherits the "Swordholder" role controlling humanity's broadcast deterrent, and the narrative follows her choices (and the coded fairy tales sent by Yun Tianming) across the fall of deterrence, humanity's exile to Australia and later the Bunker and Broadcast Eras, and on toward the fate of the solar system.

Books mentioned in Death's End (4)

• A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe: “Poe wrote a story about Mosken—'A Descent into the Maelstrom.' I read it when I was younger.”
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: “Remember what Scarlett's father told her in Gone With the Wind?”
• The Judgment by Franz Kafka: “He thought of "The Judgment" by Franz Kafka, in which a father curses his son and sentences him to death.”
• Classic of Poetry: “"That's the Classic of Poetry, from a millennium before the time of Christ," Luo Ji said.”