Easy enough reading.
I like Heinlein's style.
Just not much of a plot in this book. ( )

Heinlein's snappy dialog is always what I most enjoyed about his writing, and it is on full display here. The Rolling Stones also provides some nice beginner's physics about bodies in freefall and planetary navigation. If you can get past the 1950s characters, you can have an imaginative romp. ( )

The Rolling Stones was a fun re-read, especially after the recent re-read of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (which was less fun).
I don't think this is technically classified as part of Heinlein's juvenalia, but it probably should as its pretty straightforward, light, and easily accessible.
The titular Stones are a family ala Lost In Space (thought significantly less lost, and if anything even more capable) adventuring around the solar system (mars, luna, the asteroids) essentially on a lark. Dad (a maybe sometimes professor? a scriptwriter who doesn't want to be one anymore? someone with a military and/or professional space man past?) figures dragging the family around the solar system is a good way to train and keep an eye on his genius, overachieving sons so they don't run off on escapades of their own. Those sons, Castor and Pollux, are some of the call-backs we get later in TCWTW, as is grandma Hazel. I find the Hazel here significantly more fun, interesting, and less off-putting than Hazel from the end of the World-As-Myth. Here she's at least believable as the matriarch of a family of geniuses, and isn't quite as broad ranging a polymath as she is later. This is also the origin, in some ways, of the World As Myth as the Galactic Overload is created here, by the family, as an ongoing antagonist in the scripts they continue to write to support themselves. We even get a weird hint at one point that perhaps the Overload is already real and interacting with this world.
Anyway, definitely worth the quick read, especially as it lacks some of the normal Heinlein trappings many people find objectionable. A straightforward, fun, swiss family robinson style adventure in space. ( )

Hopelessly dated but well-written, typical fifties Heinlein with competent males, obedient (but pleasantly bright) females and slide rules. There's always slide rules.

Nothing special but a nice stroll down memory lane, with more rigorous science and maths than most of what gets written in the present day. ( )

This is solid juvenile sci-fi. It sounds dated now, not least because Heinlein was too pessimistic about changes in gender roles (even though the idea of a female doctor or pilot was quite progressive when he wrote it!), but that doesn't make it less enjoyable. Tom Weiner does a good job with the audiobook, acting out the voices of all the family members. Recommended after The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, although that's not essential even though the stories take place in sequence. [2022-02-23] ( )