Foundation and Earth

The main focus of the book was twofold: the elaboration of Gaia and the search for Earth. Asimov managed to combined these two in a pretty masterful way by showing the results of humanity abandoning nature and nature having to become primitive and beastly: Aurora's dogs, Solaria's cancerous hermaphroditic society and Melpomenia's bareness & resistive moss. All of these shows that when human community dies, something worse takes its place. It was nice how the book showed this and even when we thought there was an exception through Alpha, they try to pull a Pebble in the Sky extermination of non-Earthians. The relationship between Bliss and Trevise is also developed nicely and my fears for Pelorat being left behind are not quite there for his role in translation but it did feel it was Bliss & Trevise travelling with Pelorat as a side character but a lovable one at that (once again offering to sacrifice himself for the greater good as he did in Foundation's Edge!).

I thought it was interesting how Asimov wrote these very different planets and really goes to show that the Spatian way of life is so limited and ultimately a dead end.

Daneel's reveal was pretty awesome. It's a shame we never get to see him merge with Fallom and what story that could bring. I'm happy that he's still around and that he did ultimately lead the galaxy into a better future, one that he won't be a part of for much longer. He must be quite tired seeing the rise of galactic civilization and ultimately leading it into Galaxia against a possible extra-
galactic threat.

I don't think it was quite as strong as Foundation's Edge in terms of interesting ideas explored but it did get me interested in biology, ecology, astronomy and plantelogy more than anything else could have.

Pretty good book regardless and it'll be interesting seeing Daneel's handiwork throughout the series of I ever re-read the books.