Glory Road

I'm revising my rating of this. For some reason when I first added it I was using particularly rosy eyewear.

I like Heinlein. I do. I just think I like his ideas better than his writing - the only Heinlein I've enjoyed all the way through were his more young-adult books, like Podkayne or Have Spacesuit Will Travel.

Glory Road is a frustrating read. All his characters are perfect, or perfectly bad. You can guarantee that if someone walks onto the page and they're not perfect, then within five minutes you'll discover that they are, actually, perfect. It was just hidden by your prejudice about them being, say, a beautiful woman, who must be ditzy. But no! Turns out she's a superhuman genius too. This is fine given the time in which a lot of his books were written, but he doesn't half harp on about it. The same scenario plays out dozens of times. We get it. We don't need it.

The story is wish-fulfilment fantasy, barely disguised as SF, with wasted chapters on issues irrelevant to the plot which might have served as character development if the characters had anything to develop.

This book fits in well with things like Stranger in a Strange Land and Number of the Beast as being far too long, and far too boring. This time round, I didn't make it all the way through.

Re-read this book and it seems more juvenile than I remember from when I first read it 30 years ago.