Cixin Liu may actually be some kind of alien with galactic knowledge wearing human skin, though I'm still not sure if he's one that hates or loves humanity. The book picks up with humanity holding onto the edge of a cliff by one hand and is a grueling, horrifically imaginative cycle of them pulling themselves up and getting kicked back down. More than once, Liu drops the kind of cosmic knowledge that would drive a Lovecraftian character mad. Even if  like me, you don't possess the brainpower to appreciate all the vast implications, the shape of them is enough to induce a sense of vertigo. The timescale of this series alone is a feat of bravery. I felt ten years older when it was done.

Can't give full marks because there are still stretches where you have to force yourself to stay engaged and the characters seem like (often frustrating) caricatures rather than people but it is a big step up from The Dark Forest in that there is no time-wasting dream girl side plot. The women in this book are back to having agency, though what they do with it... Ye Wenjie levels of nuanced ethics there, you could debate all day. The book still needlessly ties women to compassion and men to ruthlessness but the conflict between these two traits when the survival of the human race is on the line is interesting enough forgive that.

The only things to evoke similar feelings in me are The Forever War and 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) but even they can't compete with Liu on the sheer number of visionary concepts and technologies.