"Foundation and Empire" by Isaac Asimov

This is the second book in the original Foundation trilogy. It is divided in two parts, the first titled 'Foundation and Empire' deals with the last remnants of the still powerful Galactic Empire, and its attempt to defeat the Foundation which ultimately fails and spells the final doom for the empire, which is going to be sacked (it's capital city-planter Trantor), and reduced to a mock-empire comprising of a dozen agricultural worlds ruled from the new imperial seat Neo-Trantor.

The second part is called 'The Mule' and deals with the rise of a powerful mutant whose mutant powers are unknown until the very end, but who conquers most of the know galaxy using them. The second part is weaker than the first, as you can see who is the mule (which should have been the last-page twist) in the first third of the story (there just way too many clues and pointers). This book as a whole in itself reads as somewhat weaker that the first one, maybe because the first one was actually five independent short stories (minus the first one, which was written especially for it), and each one of them had a twist at the end, more or less exciting and surprising (Asimov seems to like twists).

The first part "Foundation and Empire" starts describing the Galactic Empire in greater detail, although in its last days, still strong and glorious, with many of the functions intact, especially on the Core Worlds and Trantor. Descriptions of Trantor and the Galactic Fleet with their humongous, gigantic spaceships, huge armies, generals and the ensuing space battles are a pleasure to read. The end is a little bit of a letdown, since nothing really was 'done', history just adjusted itself by itself, because of the socio-economic-military conditions, and the strong general was defeated by his own strong emperor, the last one in line.

The second part was interesting conjecture, and an exercise in creative thinking on the part of Asimov, that a single individual with incredible powers could sway the course of history, or at least for a certain period, and derail the mathematical precision of succession prediction by even such advanced science as psychohistory. Hiding who the mule was until the very end was not really an effective plot device because there are too few characters, and the mule must be one of the main ones. Still entertaining though.