History YMMV / TheRobotsOfDawn

* HumansAreFlawed: Even though Elijah Baley cheats on Jessie with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.

-->"I cannot say what I feel in any human sense, Partner Elijah. I can say, however, that the sight of you seems to make my thoughts flow more easily, and the gravitational pull on my body seems to assault my sense with lesser insistence, and that there are other changes I can identify. I imagine that what I sense corresponds in a rough way to what it is that you may sense when you feel pleasure."

* HoYay: Elijah and Daneel, not losing it in the slightest despite the passage of time in-universe and the nearly three decades between when this novel was written and its predecessor. Indeed, the biggest hangup Elijah seems to have is that [[InterspeciesRomance Daneel is not a human]], rather than the fact that Daneel is physically designed as a male (and considering Gladia's relationship with Jander, Daneel's virtual twin, such a thing was not impossible).
-->Vasilia said "Friends? An Earthman and a humaniform robot? Well, there is a match. Neither quite human."
-->Baley said, sharply, “Nevertheless bound by friendship. Do not, for your own sake, test the force of our—” Now it was he who paused and, as though to his own surprise, completed the sentence impossibly, “—love.”

-->He could not allow this. If all else failed—thought, pride, will—then he would have to fall back on shame. He could not collapse under the impersonal, superior gaze of the robots. Shame would have to be stronger than fear. He felt Daneel's steady arm about his waist and shame prevented him from doing what, at the moment, he most wanted to do—to turn and hide his face against the robotic chest. He might have been unable to resist if Daneel had been human—

* CreatorsPet: Gladia. If you didn't like her much in the last book, you won't like her here, no matter what the writer tells you you should. And if the muttered, clumsy justifications for her adultery aren't enough to sway your mind, she more-or-less takes advantage of Lije's impaired mental state.

* CreatorsPet: Gladia. If you didn't like her much in the last book, you won't like her here, no matter what the writer tells you you should. And if the muttered, clumsy justifications under YourCheatingHeart aren't enough to sway your mind, she more-or-less takes advantage of Lije's impaired mental state.
* [[HumansAreFlawed Flawed Hero]]: Even though Elijah Baley [[YourCheatingHeart cheats on Jessie]] with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.

* FreudWasRight - Played with. Vasilia [[UnusualEuphemism offers herself]] (i.e. proposes sexual intercourse) to [[IncestIsRelative her father]], Han Fastolfe, though she insists that this was because he was the only man she knew up to that point. He himself believed it was natural for her, since he was close to her and [[TheTalk educated her on the subject]], and for the life of him couldn't figure out why he refused.

* FlawedHero: Even though Elijah Baley [[YourCheatingHeart cheats on Jessie]] with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.

* YourCheatingHeart: Even though Elijah Baley cheats on Jessie with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.

* HoYay: Elijah and Daneel, not losing it in the slightest despite the passage of time in-universe and the nearly three decades between when this novel was written and its predecessor. Indeed, the biggest hangup Elijah seems to have is that [[InterspeciesRomance Daneel is not a human]], rather than the fact that Daneel is physically designed as a male (and considering Gladia's relationship Jander, Daneel's virtual twin, such a thing was not impossible).

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: when Baley, Daneel and Giskard are returning to Fastolfe's home after interviewing Amadiro, Elijah starts to suffer from an agoraphobic crisis in the middle of a brutal storm, at the same moment the vehicle they are in starts to fail. In spite of his terrors, he has enough presence of mind to realize what happened (the vehicle was sabotaged) and to divine Amadiro's plans, so he is able to save the situation by ordering the robots to leave him alone and go to Fastolfe's, and then he has the presence of mind to outright lie to several robots that were looking for Daneel.

* CompleteMonster: Vasilia paints her father this way to Lije, though he suspects that the CrapsaccharineWorld of Aurora is more to blame.

* CompleteMonster: Vasilia paints her father this way to Lije.

* YourCheatingHeart: Even though Elijah Baley cheats on Jessie with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.
** Asimov was not well-known for FlawedHero characters, but this is a good example of one.

** The villain of the book [[spoiler: (as opposed to the actual killer of Jander)]] has a pretty monstrous vision of how to ensure eternal Spacer superiority: [[spoiler: space UAVs whose definition of "human" in the First Law doesn't include humans of the "wrong" kinds. How very racist.]]

* YourCheatingHeart: Even though Elijah Baley cheats on Jessie with Gladia, you still root for him because the alternative (Kelden Amadiro) would be a total disaster. Plus he's kind of a Wise Owl to the robots.

* CompleteMonster: Vasilia paints her father this way to Lije.