The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 20 November 1999
by Robert A. Heinlein
This is pretty light fare for diligent readers, but ends up with some surprising touches. Kip is a teenager struggling to study for entrance into a good college on the way to fulfilling his dreams of flying to the Moon. There is a contest given by a soap company whose first prize is just a vacation to the Moon. So, Kip ends up on our one natural satellite, finally, but lands there in the midst of a sneaky group of aliens and their piratical activities. Falling in with a young girl, also a captive of the "wormfaces", Kip's adventures are only beginning, and the young man turns out to be extremely precocious. There is a lot of adventure packed into this book. Most of it is aimed at a young audience. Some passages, including a dangerous trek across the lunar landscape, drag on for far too long. And it isn't until three quarters of the way through the book that any of these adventures begin to take on any meaning. But in that last quarter, Heinlein manages to insert some striking imagery (some of which appeared later in Stranger in a Strange Land). Even so, the book falls a little flat. The device of the extremely bright teenaged protagonists is too convenient. And despite attention to detail, some key elements are merely glossed. There isn't much there there, but the book has its moments.
Also by Heinlein: [The Door into Summer]