** spoiler alert ** This was a great, if depressing, way to finish up the Foundation series (if read in published rather than chronological order, obviously). Not only did Asimov continue to improve on writing semi-realistically flawed characters, he also managed to start drawing this reader far more emotional perspectives than before (though I don't think he's really tried to do that before in this series, at least).

Most importantly to me, this book finally tied up one of the loose ends that had been nagging me since Second Foundation: that psychohistorians had somehow gone from a math that couldn't address individuals to a mental ability that only worked on individuals, even while they're math still couldn't venture there. It took four books to get there, but that seemingly large incongruity was finally resolved, and fairly satisfactorily too, allaying the last of my major quips with the series (aside from it not showing Seldon's or Eto's plan coming to fruition).