I wanted to be fair and give this a real shot, and don't get me wrong, I did finish it and was mildly surprised by the ending twist, but all in all, I just didn't enjoy it.

I mean, I should have because it is set in Asimov's Robot stories universe.

And I could have really enjoyed it because it's trying to be very diagrammatically logical mixing philosophy with SF.

BUT it was heavily overladen with Christian themes that would have felt flat in the 1950's. Just imagine how modern readers should be feeling with that kind of thing now?

I'll skip the big-time psychosexual sadism that was meant to prove a point because the point was made. Heavily. Overmuch, even.

And then there was the language. Yeah. Not bad language... just that it was basically a bloodthirsty lunatic in conversation with a Jesuit. Odd. Kinda unpleasant. But anyway.

I did read this because it was a nom for this year's Hugo. It's also rather weak, unfortunately. I'm probably going to not give this story a place on the ballot. ( )