Robots and Empire

Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Mild
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes (Robots)
Rating: PG
Writing style: 3/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5

Two hundred years after the events in The Robots of Dawn, Daneel is now the property of Gladia, and together with Giskard must keep her safe as she is swept up in a grand crusade to unite the Spacers and colonists from Earth. WARNING: Huge spoilers for the end of The Robots of Dawn! I HIGHLY recommend you wait to read this review until after reading the first three books.

Our story opens on a peaceful night-time scene. Gladia, now in the twenty-third decade of her long Spacer life, watches the stars from Aurora. She is tended to by many robots, but Daneel and Giskard are her right and left hand. Gladia would rather not have Giskard, but Lije insisted that she keep him close. After all this time she is still not aware of Giskard's ability to sense and influence the minds of others—the only people alive who know are Daneel and Vasilia.

Giskard nudges Gladia into a meeting with Elijah Baley's descendent, D.G. (can you guess what the two letters stand for?), a meeting which starts her on a long journey to Solaria, Baleyworld, and Earth itself. Along the way Giskard and Daneel, in close cahoots with one another, sense that they are on the edge of uncovering a great threat to humanity. Giskard has been developing his theory of psychohistory throughout the past two centuries, and meanwhile, Daneel's mind has been working on some crucial questions about the Three Laws. Together they make quite the duo of rogue robots, but their primary goal—to protect and aid humans—is ever at the forefront of their minds.

In this final book of the four, Asimov makes Daneel and Giskard the main protagonists, rather than the humans they are shadowing, which is quite a treat for the robot-loving reader. However, this book almost entirely lacks the element of mystery, which was the driving force behind the last three volumes. There are no new cultures encountered to spice things up, and so much time is spent in the antagonist's viewpoint that there is very little feeling of suspense. Around the middle of the book, Asimov doles out generous helpings of villainous monologue (or dialogue, as there are two men working together on the plot), telling us everything about the plan except for the exact means by which it will be carried out. That section was quite a slog, since I had very little interest in the rambling, smoldering tantrum-throwing of Dr. Amadiro, who has been nursing vengeful feelings over Lije's victory for over two centuries.

Meanwhile, Gladia and D.G. have some sort of chemistry going on, which is just a little weird, considering she slept with this guy's revered ancestor. However, I will admit that having Gladia as the main human protagonist was much better than I expected. She has matured some in the last 200 years, and this time her personal awakening is centered on social change and interplanetary relations rather than sexual exploration.

For readers who are missing Lije, he appears twice in flashbacks—one in which he meets Gladia and Daneel on a ship, and one at his deathbed. These are some of my favorite scenes, despite the fact that Gladia and Lije end up having sex again ("offscreen"). This is because these scenes show the enormous extent to which Lije has come to respect Daneel and think of him as a friend and a person—and, on the other hand, they also show how knowing Lije has influenced Daneel and helped him to grow in ways he never expected to be capable of.

There are also a lot of brilliant conversations between Giskard and Daneel in the quiet hours when the humans are busy or sleeping, which add ever more layers to their individual personalities and roles in the story. Daneel and Giskard (as well as Daneel and Lije) could easily be read as platonic partners. Thus we have two very important characters whose lives do not at all revolve around sexual or romantic coupling. They still have significant relationships, not least their relationship with each other, and in all those relationships their asexual and virtually genderless nature is rarely even brought up as a point of concern–rather, they are taken as a matter of course, even by the humans, and perhaps even counted a strength.

Since Gladia spends a lot of time with the Settlers (colonists from Earth), gender roles are usually bound by binary thinking and sexism. Gladia is a spectacle to the rough and tumble crew of D.G.'s ship, but she has become a stronger character since the last time we saw her. She is less of a victim in this book and more of a champion, even if she unwittingly gets a lot of guidance and help from the robots. She sticks up for herself against D.G. and his men. But that is about as good as the gender representation gets in this book. Other aspects were definitely disappointing. Once again the only other significant female character is Vasilia, and she is still caught up in her own bitterness. There is at least one female official on Earth and this time it is treated as a matter of course, which is a small improvement. But the first "female" android to show up in this series is extremely busty and running around in a sexy bathrobe.

I forgot to mention in my review for Robots of Dawn that Amadiro is the only important character in the series that I was aware of being dark in skin tone. With that in mind, it just figures that he is also the central antagonist in two out of the four books. Yes, at least there is some darker color to break up the assumed whiteness (or bronzeness) of everyone else, and it is an older book (not that old!), but from someone writing about the possible future, I try to expect better.

The ideas that drive the story are still interesting, even if they're not as tightly executed as in the last three. The ending coupled the general threat to Earth with a twist that made it all much more personal and will haunt me for a long, long time. So despite its flaws, I definitely recommend Robots and Empire. And if reading all that was a delight, and you still want more Daneel… well, I hear he's hiding in some of Asimov's other novels! Someday I'll get around to reading the Foundation books… but for now, this is my go-to series for all my robot needs, since as far as I know it features robots most prominently of all of Asimov's longer works.