Second Foundation, Foundation #3
So, to my legion of followers who've nodded sagely at my commentary while reading 'The Foundation Trilogy', and who might have noticed the discrepancy between my complaints and my final 'rating', you may be asking what use was all that griping if I ended up liking the books after all?
To that I can only say that, like his psychohistory, Asimov works best when dealing with larger problems. When it comes to individual characters it's mostly a wash.
The only exception to this is the unusually precocious Arkady who spies on her father and his friends' conspiracy meetings and sneaks into a mission to discover the location of the Second Foundation. That section of the book also had a great deal more humor in it, I loved the scene that played on the "big reveal" moments SF books can have.
The overall plot was engaging and I think this trilogy works pretty well on its own even if the Seldon Plan doesn't "complete" its 1,000 year workings "in-book". Seeing the end doesn't matter, and I don't plan on reading the later books Asimov wrote decades later, either. I'll ESPECIALLY not touch the books written by other authors.
I'm glad I read these, but I can't promote them as being of interest to anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in SF books already.
Foundation
Next: 'Foundation's Edge'
Previous: 'Foundation and Empire'
