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Isaac Asimov – The Robots of Dawn | Review

Title: The Robots of Dawn

Author: Isaac Asimov

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 480

Rating: 3.5/5

This book is one of the installments in Asimov’s Robot series, and so that makes it essentially a science fiction detective novel with a whole bunch of ethics thrown in. Asimov is probably most famous for creating the three laws of Robotics, which are the following:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

What’s fun about this book, like the other books that tie in with these laws, is that Asimov basically created them only so that he could bend and break them. We get some great examples of that here, including some suggestions of scenarios which could cause two of the laws to come into conflict with themselves and to cause a robot to overload.

Then we have the morality side of things. In fact, the whole case here revolves around the murder of a robot, and so there’s a lot of discussion around whether such a thing is even possible. After all, robots aren’t alive, right? There’s even some stuff on how while you can use roboticide and homicide, the word “murder” doesn’t seem to quite apply.

Obviously I don’t want to go too much into the details of the plot, because the last thing that I want to do is to spoil it for people. What I will say is that it holds its own both as a science fiction novel and as a mystery novel, and indeed I think that Asimov is one of the underrated masters of the genre. I’ve read a mystery of his called A Whiff of Death which was set in our world on an American college campus, and that was fantastic.

Another piece of good news is that despite the fact that this is the third book in a series, you can still read it as a standalone if you want to. Sure, you’ll get a little more out of it if you follow the series through from start to finish, but it’s not a hard and fast rule and all that you miss out on is a little character development.

So all of this brings us on to the final big question of whether this is worth reading or not, and my answer to that would be 100% yes. Asimov is a fantastic writer no matter what he’s doing, and while there are other books of his that are a lot of fun, this is great too. Jeez, he always is.

Learn more about The Robots of Dawn.

If you liked this, you might also like:

Isaac Asimov – Fantastic Voyage | Review

Isaac Asimov – The Winds of Change | Review

Isaac Asimov – Pebble in the Sky | Review

Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata – Death Note: Black Edition Volume II| Review

Title: Death Note: Black Edition Volume II

Author: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 367

Rating 4.5/5

This is arguably the book that’s got me invested in this series, because up until this point, I kind of knew what to expect and roughly what was going to happen. As of this one, I didn’t really know what was going to happen, and that made the book much more enjoyable as a result of it.

I also like the way that the different twists and turns kept me guessing throughout, and it seems as though that’s only going to continue as the story progresses. In a way, it reminds me of Prison Break because of that, with each of these Black Edition bind-ups acting a little bit like different seasons.

Now, I don’t want to go into the story line too much because it’s the second book in a series and so it’s hard to talk about it without revealing spoilers. What I will say is that our understanding of the laws governing the death notes continues to grow here while at the same time, rules that we previously knew about and forgot come back into play.

We also get some new characters coming into play, which changes the game and stops it from feeling as though the authors are simply rehashing the same ideas. Having read the bulk of the third collection at the time of writing, I can also confirm that it sets things up nicely for that, and because this is a longer series, there’s no sense of middle book syndrome here. Just quality writing and quality illustration.

I’m relatively new to manga, and Death Note is the only series that I’ve dipped into so far, but I can safely say after the first two installments of this, I’m hooked. Of course, it helps that the story line itself is so unique, so quirky, and that I haven’t really seen anything like it elsewhere. So would I recommend this book? Of course I would, but it’s obviously not the best one to start with. They need to be read in order.