This has a much stronger focus on characters than I expected from a classic scifi author, they were really defined and interesting. I didn´t like the protagonist Morris and he was the least interesting out of the bunch, still he was a way for Western readers back then to observe the Russian characters and science. Talking about science, the author was not able to shut up about it. While I really enjoyed reading this book, all the science talk sometimes kept me from picking it up. It was just too much and made the whole adventure part of the story much less interesting for me than the set-up (where we get to know the sitation and characters in a really nice way). Apart from that, which really broke the flow for me, I really enjoyed the writing style. There is a lot of focus on dialog and descriptions really worked for me. This could have been a little shorter but I actually didnt mind that much and I guess the things that other people would have edited out are the parts I liked most.^^ Now I absolutely want to read more by Asimov.