It came up in conversation recently, and I remembered that I liked certain parts of it rather a lot, but that the novel as a whole was wildly uneven and not one of Heinlein's better efforts.
So I set off to reread it and see what I thought now. I'm about a quarter of the way in and, even before I can write any kind of review, I have to note a glaring annoyance: Heinlein alternates viewpoint characters from chapter to chapter between the Professor and Hilda and Zeb and Deety... but they all talk exactly the same.
Open the book to a random chapter and you'll be challenged to find out whose eyes you're supposed to be looking through until they think or say something explicitly expository.
.
