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Publisher:
Robert Hale |
Release
Date: 3 January 2003 |
ISBN:
0709071396 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Hardback |
Buy
it at Amazon US
|| UK |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Teen SF/Classic reissue |
Reviewer:
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewer
Notes: |
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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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