Always good to come back and reread a classic SF story. The thing I like the most is that you can have a whole story, full of drama, minus bloodshed and sex and other silly struts (though many stories do benefit greatly from their addition), and actually be able to believe that it would be a possible thing to have happen. This first book covers a period of roughly three hundred years over three separate stories about the collapse of a galactic empire and its slow rebuilding from the edges of space. It also seems to be a commentary about our own world and possibly every empire that has appeared upon it, but I would say that it is mainly the Roman Empire it has in its sights.