Review

This is the last-written of the "Empire" books, although it takes place between the other two. In terms of quality, it is also medium. It is not one of Asimov’s better novels, but not nearly as bad as The Stars, Like Dust--. At least here I remember many of the plot details between rereadings, although none of the characters' names.

The main story proceeds well enough and is interesting enough. Rik himself, Lona, the Townman—all the main characters react well, and it is interesting to watch Rik change from a helpless child to a confident adult.

And yet the plot does seem a little contrived in places and does have some incredible coincidences. I think, however, the main weakness of the book—and something which irreparably damages it in my eyes—is one aspect of the ending. The book repeatedly stresses that kyrt can only be grown on Florina, anywhere else it’s just cotton. Over and over, we‘re told, efforts have been made to simulate Florina sufficiently to grow kyrt elsewhere, including simulating Florina’s sun. They all failed.

Then, suddenly, at the end of the book, we expect them to succeed. It probably is Florina’s sun that’s the key factor. The pre-nova stage and kyrt go together, we‘re told. As for why previous efforts to duplicate the light from Florina’s sun didn’t work—well, they obviously didn’t try hard enough or include enough of the spectrum.

I'm sorry, but I just did not buy that. It seemed incredibly hokey when I first read the book, and it seems incredibly hokey now. Trying all of the sun’s radiation is so obvious a move I can’t believe that nobody ever tried it before. And, unfortunately, that one niggling little details was enough to lower the book considerably in my estimation—not, I think, that it would have ranked all that high in the first place.