Errol's Reviews > Foundation

You kind of have to approach this book the way you would an Aesop's fable or The Divine Comedy. It's more of a thinkpiece than it is a traditional novel. There are some excellent moments of real, human emotion showing through that facade though, and I think that's the factor that has made this series so enduringly fascinating. The action definitely picks up in the last half, which brings the characters out of the dusty state rooms of Terminus and into the wider world (worlds?).

There's lots of very well thought out political gambits, and the occasional bit of skulduggery. The characters are not particularly nuanced or distinguishable from one another and for the most part the protagonists serve as Very Clever mouthpieces for the theory of the novel. The villains are unanimously nay-sayers who get their rightful comeuppance. It's a very black-and-white universe, but once you get past that this book has some very interesting ideas about the cyclical rise and fall of society.