Friday

Ah me, where to begin? The story gets off to a cracking, if distasteful, start and this had all the makings of a neat little SF thriller. And maybe picking a late-period Heinlein novel might have been a good thing. But then what does the old goat do? He slams on the brakes and sends our erstwhile heroine, Friday, off to New Zealand for some R n R with her “Group Family”. Yes, old Bob is back to expounding his views on polygamy, free love and alternatives ways of living.

But once you derail a story, especially a would-be high-octane thriller, it's hard to get it back on track. Heinlein then proceeds to shunt Friday around the politically realigned federations of North America, throwing in a set of world and space-wide assassinations for good measure, along the way forgetting to advance anything remotely resembling a plot. It's almost like he came up with this character, liked her, then didn't quite have a story to tell.

So instead we get a tour of a future Earth where America has fractured into mini-countries, as has Canada. Where petty wars start for no apparent reason and multi-national corporations have the same status as countries. It's all very long winded and repetitive. Friday comes over as a cross between GI Jane and an idiot savant with a voracious sexual appetite for both sexes. But hey, in Bob's future world that's all great because like, traditional family structures and social mores are like sooooo 20th Century, man.

Heinlein could still write zinging prose when he wanted to, but this novel is baggy, weighed down with cod philosophy, plot strands that never get tied up and an ending that seems to be part of an entirely different novel. With judicious editing this could have been a good 200 page SF thriller, instead of a 400 page polished turd.

Disappointing.