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Title: Epic? Not hardly. May contain spoilers.
Review: I bought this book because Asimov is supposedly one of the sci-fi greats, but if this book is a good example of his work his reputation is overblown. I found the characters to be flat and one dimensional. The story uses unrealistic plot devices. Yes I understand that it's science fiction, but I find it strains credulity to think that the characters were able to invent a religion worlds-spanning religion in 30 years. It also didn't seem very likely that a 12,000-year-old empire would so quickly crumble into the stone age (I'm exaggerating slightly). I realize that this book was written in 1951 but the high tech stuff in the story was hardly high tech back then, much less in an empire spanned the galaxy.Bottom line: not an especially great read.
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