An easy 5 stars!!!

God what a book, easily one of my favorites, the concept and execution was incredible.
While there are still some recycling of plots Asimov has done before

(such as someone of importance to the plot losing their memory and fumbling around while people try to get them for their own political purposes and they regain their memory over time which helps solve everything, which is precisely what happened in the previous book. Also subplot of two people on opposing sides falling in love when it would be culturally inappropriate in the in-book universe, something he's done 3 or 4 times already)

, it was all executed brilliantly that I don't give a shit about the recycling.

As someone halfway through the Foundation books and started reading this series due the recent revelation of its connection to the Robots and Foundation series, I immensely enjoyed how Schwartz' character grew throughout the book.

Him discovering his mental abilities was amazing, the theories it evoked in me to how the galaxy evolved from Schwartz, was Hari Seldon of Foundation aware of Schwartz and his mental abilities and factored them into his plans for the Second Foundation? Did they have the same machine and made the original Second Foundation Psychohistorians telepathic like Schwartz? Or did he collect individuals descended from him? And now I'm curious about Gaia from the Foundation's Edge book, how did they come to be? They hinted at Robots teaching the humans telepathy, but is that true? Or more Chinese whispers of history? Are the Gaians descendants of Schwartz or did the machine get used on others?

This is the kind of shit Asimov should be inspiring in the reader with each book; his incredible ideas should be baked in with descriptive prose that you don't need a PhD to actually understand. He often writes like a historian/scientist and often forgets to write like a storyteller, however in this book he achieved equilibrium and expertly conveyed such an incredible story with the perfect blend of storytelling, science and humanity.

I really felt the characters in this book, and the ideas at play, and the world building is the best I've seen so far from him. For once it felt like he described how the society was so different and yet similar to what us readers live in; the local restaurant you can get a full meal for by putting a coin in the machine and how the packaging automatically opens itself and then heats itself up, being a prime example.

Most characters actually felt unique and we were were able to gauge what type of person they were, what felt consistent with their characters and the character dynamics at play were very well executed. The romance was again extremely one-dimensional and forced, and, as in most cases I've found with Asimov's works, completely unnecessary to the book (I think Asimov has a self imposed rule that a story can't be a real story unless someone falls in love in a few chapters and blurts "I love you" out of nowhere, it is getting unbearable at this point).
AND! And! The names weren't shit! The character names were actually pretty decent and felt like actually names, instead of how they usually feel like they came from a sci-fi name generator 😂 

Overall, this was one of his best I've read, a huge improvement over the other books in this series.
It was gripping from start to finish.