It took me 3 tries to finish the book. The writing style of Robert A. Heinlein is compelling, but I was lost in the plot and annoyed by the characters. Heinlein has written better books. ( )

It took me 3 tries to finish the book. The writing style of Robert A. Heinlein is compelling, but I was lost in the plot and annoyed by the characters. Heinlein has written better books. ( )

Heinlein's dialogue is always rather poor; his characters appear to take delight without end in snidishness. Partway through The Number of the Beast, I'm putting it down. Though curious as to how Heinlein connects the worlds of L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs with his own, I am put off by the conversational inanity - enough that continuing reading is more of a chore than a pleasure. ( )

I must admit: this book was my first experience with Heinlein. I had never read anything of his before that. Part of what drove me to read it was that I had heard all of my sci-fi reader peers say that Heinlein was "amazing" or their "favorite author" or some other such laudatory comments. Another part was the fact that I am a die hard Wizard of Oz fan, and make it a point to read as much as I can with respect to the whole Oz mythos. The third, and quite possibly the strongest part, was that my economics teacher in high school gave me the book, and it had been sitting on my shelf until I finally picked it up and read it.

I dare say, true fans of Heinlein will not like the conclusion I have come to: I did not fully enjoy this book. Maybe I need to read every other Heinlein book first, or maybe I just read one of the "bad" Heinlein books, or maybe the neap tide was happening and that affected my enjoyment, or one of a million other reasons. The fact of the matter is, I did not enjoy the book.

I loved the fact that it was crossover fiction. If you were to see my bookshelf, you would see several examples of crossover fiction. So, it's not the fact that it was discombobulated.

I think it was the way people talked. I'm not sure if it was how people talked "back then," when Heinlein wrote it (back in the '80s... you know, the 1980s). I find it hard to believe that anybody in the future would feel the need to make a distinction between the '90s and the Gay '90s, or that anybody would actually know what the Gay '90s was, unless they took a modern history class recently.

I'm convinced that it was entirely the dialogue that turned me off to the book. And it's strange, too, as the dialogue in Asimov's stuff didn't set me off to it, and his characters made very large segues into things like economics or physics or one of the other billion of topics Asimov knew vividly.

Maybe it was just too danged uncharacteristic, or maybe everybody talked too much. Maybe it felt as if every single aspect of the book had to be qualified. Oh, Deety has an internal clock? Great! We don't need to hear about it every few pages. Stuff like that. Also, what's up with them playing dress-up all the danged time? "Let's go to Mars! But first, let's dress up like were in an ERB novel! Whee!"

I guess I would have enjoyed it better if they actually had more believable dialogue, and less dialogue at that. And would have actually done things to move the plot. There were some interesting tidbits in the book, but not enough for me to consider it a favorite, or even one that I greatly enjoyed.

You may like it if you're a die hard Heinlein fan. But if you are a die hard Heinlein fan, wouldn't you have already read it? ( )

I've always enjoyed this one more for the ideas than the actualization of them. I like the idea of the different worlds in fiction having their own universes and being real.

However, the witting is rather sad, the dialog can be abysmal and his views on sex....well, off putting is one word that works. I read this as a teen and found it very confusing and a bit disturbing, but not enough to not read it.

My family have always categorized Heinlein as having three periods of writing, his Boyscout Period (Space Cadet), his Good Period (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) and is Insane Period, (I Will Fear No Evil and on), though there is some debate about Friday.

I would recommend this book to Heinlein fans or completists, or someone who can read a book f and enjoy it for the ideas alone vs. quality writing and entertainment. ( )