Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Publisher: Robert Hale
Release Date: 3 January 2003
ISBN: 0709071396
Awards:
Format Reviewed: Hardback
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Genre: Teen SF/Classic reissue
Reviewer: Rachel A Hyde
Reviewer Notes:

Podkayne of Mars
Robert A Heinlein  

     Teenager Podkayne Fries (named for a Martian saint) lives on Mars at some unspecified date in the future. She has a high-status family, an illustrious uncle and a genius of a younger brother. Telling the story through her diary, she soon reveals herself as a self-possessed and precocious girl who wants to be a spaceship pilot and is looking forward to going on a tour to Earth. When things go wrong, it is her uncle who steps in and the three of them – Podkayne, her brother Clark and Uncle Tom--are soon aboard a luxury spaceship, traveling First Class. But things are not all rosy, and it looks as though “Poddy” is going to have some growing up to do at top speed if she is going to survive in the real world.

     Robert A Heinlein needs no introduction and this reprint from 1965 shows the master at work. Podkayne is a wonderfully entertaining person to have as a guide to this futuristic world and through her eyes, it all comes to vivid, three-dimensional life, rather as through Heinlein had actually been there. The conservative atmosphere of Mars; the frontier town, Venusberg, with its gambling hells and corruption; the spaceship cruise where First Class is all old people and Podkayne's own privileged but rather rackety family life. Throughout the book, as she grows up in a short space of time we can see the spoiled teenager becoming a young woman.

     This book’s only flaw is the abrupt ending, which seems rather a disappointment after all that has gone before, for a number of reasons (most of them plot spoilers, so they cannot be aired here). It is a fast and easy read, like most really good books but with plenty to think over and some stunningly real descriptions. Venusberg particularly stays in the mind.

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