The End of Eternity - Isaac Asimov

⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Tim)

The final final final book in my Asimov journey. This one is another standalone, but with definite connections to his over-arching universe. And what a finale it was. I owe so much to the random Reddit user who recommended the book order I took through Asimov.

Foundation and a lot of his other works are about humanity as a whole, and how mankind evolves over centuries. This book is about a group of people called Eternals who live outside of time and who work to keep humankind on the right path. They perform slight changes in time (they can enter at specific moments and do stuff) that will keep mankind on its optimal path. For example, they do tons of computations, realize that if a person drinks decaf coffee instead of coffee one night then a war will be avoided, so they enter time and make it happen. Really cool stuff.

Asimov is always thorough, and he attacks the paradoxes of time travel and changing reality head on. I can't say I understand it all, but this is as good as I have seen it done since he does not shy away from the complexity.

I did think a couple of the characters were pretty thin, and as usual the women in Asimov's works are there to drive the main character forward. However, I was pleasantly surprised that many of the characters were intentionally a bit one dimensional, and when their true purposes were exposed near the end it reveals their motivations and makes some of the forced relationships fall into place. The love interest bothered me the whole time, since it seems like this woman just falls in love with our protagonist for no reason and drives all his decisions, but without spoiling things she becomes much more than that.

The ending was very beautiful, and I think closes the circle perfectly for all his works. This has a classic "Dumbledore explains everything at the end" ending, but it works, and the final couple sentences, although very simple, have grand implications and I found it all to be genius. Makes me want to jump right back into Foundation and relive his whole universe again, but maybe I will wait a couple years (or until the TV show comes out).

I loved my time with Asimov, and I think if I had read all this before LOTR I would say these are my all-time favourite works. Now comes a dark period of despair in my life, where I will search in vain for something fill this Asimov shaped hole in my heart.