The Robots of Dawn

So I finally finished reading The Robots of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov. The non-spoiler review is that it was boring, too drawn out, and had a stupid ending. Also there was a scene in which the bad guy good guy cheats on his wife. I almost stopped reading at that point but I had already trudged through 300-some pages so I was too far to just stop there. I am not inclined to try his other books. The rest of this will have spoilers.

I'd say a good 90% of it is straight dialogue. Which is boring. Everyone just talked and talked, and a lot of it was circular. No one wants to read about 3-4 pages of someone discussing which word to use in a situation and what meanings different people might ascribe to it. Boring! Anyway, if I took out all the meaningless stuff the book would be about 200 pages shorter at least. Finally after spending 400 pages over-thinking and over-talking everything it's like the author came to that point and realized "Hey, I talked myself into a corner here and have no way to end this book! So I'll throw in this lame-ass 'magic caused it' ending." Really. You go through 400 pages of detective stuff and talking out a solution to the mystery and then at the end everything that had happened in the book is pointless because magic made it happen. btw, I have no respect for someone who can stomach writing the "good guy" as someone who is flippant about cheating on his wife. I mean maybe I just got unlucky and this is his worst book. But he's presumably one of the top 3 best scifi authors. But I just don't see it. Maybe this sorta thing would entertain bored teenagers/young adults of the 50s or 60s, with its descriptions and dialogue. I can see how it would transport pre-tv and pre-internet people into another world. But this book was written in, I think, 1983 or something.

btw, Victor says I completely missed the point. He claims the point is that the robot who can magically read minds has to obey the three laws regardless. Bleh, really? That's what we wasted 400-some pages on? He could have made the same point with a short story, 12 pages tops. To me the point is that he started writing something, had no idea what he was doing or where he was going, threw together a sloppy story just to squeeze out one more paycheck book and every so often decided "no, no, that doesn't make sense so I'll throw this on there" and then after 400 pages decided "oh, crud. I've written so much and now I can't figure out how to talk my way out of this corner I've backed myself into through over-thinking everything and I'm sick of this, I'll just end it with magic and claim that was the point of all this." I mean, I get it. I even sympathize. It's really easy to over think what you write and find yourself without a solution. Magic's the easy way out. If I was sick of my own long and drawn out story and just wanted to end it I'd do the same thing. I'd tidy it up and even throw in a few things in earlier scenes to make magic a plausible solution. It's annoying that he wasted so many pages and so much of my time, but I do understand that part. However, I do not understand why he had to trash his main character. While the wife cheating did have a point it could have easily been done a different way. Such as, maybe he was too weak to eat at the table so she brought him soup in bed and waited till he was done eating so she could make sure he actually ate it all and then as soon as he finished eating she could have stood up to take the empty bowl and spoon when he said what he said, cause if she needed to hear what he said in his sleep it's real easy to do so without doing something horrid with his supposed "good guy".