WHAT A FUCKING BOOK.... I only finished this book in a spiteful rage.
Coming on the heels of the first three books with 20 year gap, the entire book is filled with unreliable narrators. The literary equivalent of 6 year olds making shit up on the spot as they go. Nothing makes sense or is internally consistent because of "mystic forces" throughout... which shouldn't be too surprising based on the last book, but now its literally every character and every scene.
the ultimate scene where I learn i wasted my time
400 pages into this story we get the space mexican standoff between
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foundation hitler, who is developing technology which might make them independent and autonomous of silly psychic bullshit... and, horror of horror, make them characters with agency and vested interests....
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foundation big brother.... who doesn't have many redeeming qualities to be honest
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HIVE MIND, which we JUST FUCKING MEET, which can control anyone from any distance, and wants to control everyone in the galaxy.... but only if we say its ok
We have some cosmic mumbojumbo that makes our decisions perfect crystallization of pure involatile universal truth.... sure... why not.
And like in a bad bethesda rpg we need to choose which of these factions deserves to "win"... no layered incentives to make us invested... no debate about free-will and agency..... Everyone will become (physical slaves, physical slaves to psionic slavelords, or psionically brainwashed into a galactic hivemind)
Talk about insulting the intelligence of the reader... no other fucking options to consider, no debate to be had..... but again.... maybe our protagonist isn't in full control of themselves so we are seeing this through the lens of a unreliable narrator..... FUCK YOU...... What is the point in reading about anything if we can't seriously consider anything written? The book is a wasted 450 pages because any thoughts I have on it can be explained away by some version of "Thats what they wanted you to think".... FUCK THIS BOOK
I'd much rather read a story about how how humans are fighting off evil psionic overlords rather then thousands of pages of text on why being a psionic slave is a rather nifty idea, but only if the right people are in quiet control of the new slave empire.....
Maybe 30,000 years of vigorous galactic competition is a small price to pay to throw off the shackles of forever psionic slavery...... The only reason the author can think of to get any power block to act is if somehow people could have independent thought, and it's expressed as a BAD thing...
Early in the book we meet Speaker Kai Winn, well written character, I was sure she was of Bajor.
no mention of another galaxy, the hive mind was called "anti-mules" for most of the book
Oh shit, I just remembered the kid from the last book, and what they did to it at the end. If you hated Edge, you need to read Earth, just for closure. Remember, middle school.
Wow, I remember absolutely zero of that. And I LOVED these books. (I last read them in middle school.)
The last book revisits a couple of lost 1st wave Spacer planets (from the Elijah Bailey books). Asimov started tying all his books together as he got older.
But they might have written more after Asimov died?
I suppose I don't hate the books, I'm just a bit disappointed at how mental control is such a gimmick it overshadows everything.
This book I read with the expectation that nobody had genuine intrinsic motivation, so I saw it everywhere, but it's not fulfilling as a reader
Empire in decline, empire being rebuilt, politics of Terminus I'm on board with...
The Gaia, Mule, second foundation psycore has felt cheap and not really fleshed out yet.