** spoiler alert ** I'm a little bit confused about this one, honestly.

The original Foundation trilogy was about the struggle of the two Foundations to stick to the Plan, and here he tosses all that buildup and backstory out the window in favor of creating a new organization bent on controlling both Foundations. I felt like he was interested in overthrowing the strictures of the Seldon Plan because he was tired of it, almost like he wanted to transcend the old trappings of human society altogether. The concept of Galaxia felt like a weird cop-out, a way of writing himself out of a corner, and it really does not fit.

That said, I enjoyed reading the story, and nobody does world-building on an epic scale (galaxy-building?) like Asimov did. He still doesn't know how to write female characters. I enjoyed reading about the journey to find Gaia / Earth, even though the reasoning behind it kind of blew everything that came before out of the water.

I also enjoyed reading about a relatively small group of characters for a Foundation novel, too. This made the story feel more intimate and self-contained. Again, the idea of a single person coming along to dramatically change history so much flies in the face of the psychohistorical model, but perhaps the purpose of Trevize's story was to provide a positive counter to the Mule and his destructive war from the previous book.

So...I enjoyed the book, even though it didn't make a whole lot of sense in the larger Foundation context.