Nemesis - Isaac Asimov

⭐ 6.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

Easily my least favorite Asimov book so far. I was engaged right off the bat with the premise, as a hidden star is found to be approaching Earth and will essentially destroy it in 5000 years. I also liked the structure of the story, with two story lines, one present day and one past, that slowly converge.

The characters in this book are all pretty similar, and all pretty annoying. Lot's of Asimov is two people in a room bouncing theories off each other given the limited information they have. In this one, however, since you know what happens in the present, people in the past hypothesizing on what's to come is frustrating, since you the reader know what is coming. Just seemed like a lot of wasted chapters, and probably could have been a more satisfying read as a short story - the Wikipedia summary is only a couple sentences.

The ending was pretty anticlimactic, and none of the characters had any sort of redemption. So the score is basically just for the cool sci fi concepts and the promising first couple chapters.

It's a standalone book from Asimov's connected universe, but there were some stray references to things in other books. So not an essential read in his canon, but I'm glad I read it. The fan theories on how it could connect to everything was pretty cool as well.