Rating: 
Summary: A great read - but should be entitled Foundation Established
Review: This series has been an awesome read. How can you not like Hari Seldon??? This volume has a lot more intrigue in it, with a good continual rythum of action and adventure, to keep anyone turning its pages. I found it to be more in line with the first volume in this series, than the second (focused really on action and the like).Foundation's Triumph though may be an overstatement for when you read through the appendix about the future of the universe as forseen by the various authors that have contributed to it, one almost wonders if Foundation Established would be the better title. Hopefully, the Asimov estate will continue to let other authors, or even these three, take on another phase of the Foundation and see where it and R. Daneel Olivaw allow humanity to go? Worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Salvage Operation
Review: I did not like "Foundation's Fear". Greg Bear and David Brin continue where Gregory Benford left off, but their novels were more salvage operations than anything else since Benford gave the entire "Second Foundation Trilogy" such a poor start. Having finally read all three novels, I am left with the impression that this was not a story of the emergence of the Second Galactic Empire as so many of us had hoped and wished for. Instead, we got a history of the Second Foundation's beginnings, and even that history is woefully inadequate. David Brin's novel is the best of the three. However, I agree that there is far too much "backstory" and very little is said about the psychohistorical momentum to build the Second Empire. Brin makes a noble attempt to cobble the disparate elements Benford introduced in the first novel and give his readers the satisfaction of knowing that a Second Empire has indeed emerged that was different from what both the Second Foundation and the people of Gaia envisioned. However, the "Killer B's" have done their readers a grave disservice by not completing the history of the Interregnum between the two Empires. David Brin compounds this sin by making oblique references to Golan Trevize and the role he is to play during this period as well as what was done by Mors Planch and Biron Maserd. Why did he do this? And is there any intention of the part of the Asimov estate to finally tie all these loose ends together? David Brin hints in his Afterword and Timeline that somebody else should continue the story. Well, I sincerely hope that somebody will, and that whoever takes up this gauntlet will be fearless enough to move forward and not be mired in the past as both Asimov himself and his "successors" were. What the heck? I might do it myself!
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