Reviews

Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov

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hermstefanny's review against another edition

3.0

I will try to not review the series as a whole, but given that this is the final instalment, I have to at least tie in with the events of previous books. I was going to give 2 stars, but I was reminded that I should not apply my morality to books that were written almost half a century ago. However, I can not discount the abuse of some storytelling devices that Asimov seem to be fond of. For example, it always seems to be another entity controlling the strings of everybody else

Spoiler

First, it was the Second Foundation, then Gaia, in this book Daneel Olivaw of all people/robot. I must be honest, this last puppeteer I didn't mind, because it's a character I already liked, and it made me want to finish the Robot Saga, a series that I have grown to like more

. Then, there is the fact this book doesn't change at all the status quo of the overarching story. One can reach Foundation's Edge end and stop there, it will still be the same result.

Spoiler

Finally, something that personally disappointed me was the dropping of the Seldon's Plan in favour of the manipulations of one single-powerful entity. Even if I personally really like this omnipotent God, the psychohistory, the mathematics, the foundationers work were only clever plans from an individual. This saga could be renamed Daneel's Plan

. I have enjoyed the world building, and the clearly smart foresight of Asimov to envision a sci-fi saga that seemed that it could happen in our Galaxy. That's why this is getting 3 stars for now

Spoiler

and also because I feel that maybe 2 stars is too low, maybe I am little biased because my part of my frustration stems from the fact that I was hoping to see that Earth was alive and well and that it wasn't so, it made me sad