THE END OF ETERNITY by Isaac Asimov ►► Book Review

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov reviewed.

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[hariszark]

I've read about 2-3 of Asimov's books so far and I have noticed the same....issues in his writing.
He is writing sci-fi with events in the future and other planets and civilizations but he is stuck to the common thinking and social behaviour of the 1950s or around it.
That is shown on the characters talking and thinking and acting. And feels wrong honestly.

In the The End Of Eternity, the story is slowly developed and some times it is not in the right order of the events and it can be confusing to the reader.
The main character is acting like a spoiled child and a jealous psycho who afraids any male near his woman.
Most of the times his conclusions are out of nowhere, right or wrong.
In general the story is good but it needed more action and I would like to have Harlan do some missions in different time eras and see how he was working, than just a telling about his work. More "show than tell" moments.

[Ferrari]

Sorry for the long comment but i'm just getting out all the thoughts i wanted to share.

I liked it. The reading experience got better as it went along and the characters were decent, even though harlan was 60% mildly unlikeable dipshit who's billed as a genius but gets obviously manipulated without knowing for the entire book (or most of it) and 40% dead fish that wasn't really worth rooting for or against. Noys character drove me bananas for a while but her name was interesting. I liked the kind of daisy buchanan esque character reveal where we realize from a very small chapter that her character is deeper than just an embodiment of the alluring fictions of her society and she's shining a light on the alluring lies of the eternals. Also another possibility of the noys lambent name is the technical definition of "noise" being "irregular fluctuations that accompany a transmission signal but arent part of it and obscure it". So she does obscure eternity's orders for harlan in an alluring way with some baloney about how the colonization of other planets makes the mass death and destruction that nuclear warface enables worth while.

Every plot twist beyond the "the dude who has the moustache just like the other dude IS the other dude" was pretty surprising but i literally groaned out loud when that was revealed with this weird air of "look how clever i am!" The narration being so outside of harlans head apart from brief glimpses really helped shock me on certain shifts.

I feel like i'm giving a ton of passes for flat characters, embarrassing scenes and exposition dumps (especially in the beginning as you said) because i'm inexperienced with science fiction and expected to find them there in the first place. 80% of the book was a fun read and the latter half was pretty exciting.

The ideas were pretty cool to think about but i actually enjoyed them far less than foundation. Like you say, the ideas are most of the point of reading asimov. The reading experience got a ton better in the latter half. Glad i read it but it was only pretty good and i might never read this again. Number ratings aren't super great for literature but i'll still lay 6.5 out of 10.

I agree with what you said about his take on time travel. Eternity and time's interactions were pretty cool to think about. I gave him half a pass on the sex scene because of the characters and how weird they were. Really fun read though.

[TIG]

It is pretty hilarious the entire organization basically fell because the main character got laid for the first time.

I thought it was OK but yeah like so much of Asimov writing it usually just comes down to two people in a room giving exposition dumps for half of it. Very creative and imaginative ideas, especially for that time but the execution was very meh.

[codelicious]

I am about an hour from the end of this title and I just had to find somewhere where I can share my frustration at Harlan and his serial ignorance and stupidity. Ive not finished the book yet as I said but I really can't see how most of the idiotic conclusions Harlan has jumped to, or the extreme measures he has taken already could possibly be justified. I feel like he needs to be locked up for fifteen or so physio-time to allow him to grow up and keep him from any more possible reality-ending stupid decisions due to misplaced suspicions and naive ignorance! Whew, I feel much better now thanks for listening!

[qwerty_]

Great review! I'd also like to add that I did enjoy the character of Twisell, who had a genuinely pretty sad backstory. But at the end of the day he's only expounded upon for like three pages, and the characters of Noys and of Cooper/Mallansohn are just pitifully empty. I admire Frank Herbert and Asimov both for exploring big ideas in their science fiction, but geez they both needed to learn how to write some character drama...