Foundation and Empire

In this book, the Foundation has to fight two empires: first, the declining but still strong Galactic Empire from which it was born; second, the new empire created by the Mule, a mutant with a special power of his own.

The first part is essentially a continuation of the previous book: the Foundation faces another threat anticipated by Seldon, although this time it suffers real damage and loss of life in the encounter.

In the second part, Asimov has come up with an interesting and imaginative way to rupture the Seldon Plan, and in principle I suppose this is the most inventive book of the trilogy.

However, the second part involves yet more damage and loss of life, and so it's a rather melancholy book, and I find it subjectively less enjoyable. The people of the Foundation were brought up to think themselves winners, blessed by Seldon's Plan; they didn't anticipate that the way ahead would be so hard.

In the first part, I dislike wasting time on the unnecessary journey to Trantor, although I understand why it was included: to show people trying hard to avert disaster, and not just relying on Seldon's Plan to save the Foundation. They decided, reasonably enough, that the Plan reckoned on people taking intelligent steps to save themselves.In the second part, the Mule himself is a good creation, but all the doom and gloom among his opponents give the story a downbeat feel. His aim, to bring about a second Galactic Empire earlier than Seldon's Plan could have achieved it, seems a worthy one; and yet his empire is held together only by himself, and after his death it disintegrates. So he disrupts Seldon's Plan without achieving anything useful, and in the process the Foundation becomes more aware of the existence of the Second Foundation, which causes further problems as explained in the next book.