Let the Gods of hell help us all. It's another "later" R. Heinlein novel. And thankfully his last and then he died.

I for one at this point absolutely despised the character Lazarus Long. Even that turd shows up in this book. What a waste of book ink. He is probably a stand in for RH himself. Just writing that name in this review makes me want to take a poop. (Sad but true).

Oh yeah, this book is about some "woman" who is RH's masturbationary wish fulfillment. I don't remember anything else except that she liked to get molested by men. And probably by her children too. I really can't remember. Maybe it was the shock therapy I had to make me forget I read this book.

So I tried to read the wiki entry to refresh my memory of this turd. 1/3 of the way through my eyes glazed over as I remember how bored I was when I read the book. Probably I was skimming it actually. I skimmed the wiki entry I was so bored.

Crap book. Crap characters. Crap reading experience.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap all around.

Don't bother reading this turd. It's crap.

Поздний Хайнлайн напоминает мне Тинто Брасса своими дурацкими шутейками, но его вклад в раскрепощение я признаю, ок. Но от сюжетных романов он сначала мигрировал к романам-проповедям, а потом просто к текстам-самоублажению в плане игры в мир, где ему х��телось бы тусоваться, без оглядки на их художественную ценность.

This may be my least favourite fiction book I've ever read, my god. I have delayed reading any reviews to not let them dilute my opinion, but from what I know this book, and the author, are held in decently high regard. Why, I cannot even comprehend.

This books reads like the twisted conservative fetish fantasy of some kind of libertarian disguising as progressive. It is a weird mélange of progressive, liberal views with an unmistakable trace of troglodytic conservatism. "Mamma Maureen" is simply a thinly veiled avatar for the author himself, a sentient soapbox of sorts. This book seems like its sole purpose is to allow the author to drone on for pages upon pages, in painfully dry and tedious dialogue, about his own personal views. Thus, it is half soapbox, half his own personal fantasy of a woman who thinks like he. And that doesn't even scrape the surface of the uncomfortably graphic but also awkwardly described sex scenes. Now I don't want to sound like a prude, I am far from it, but this book was simply too much. It starts fairly early and continues to the very end, with perhaps only the first and last 10% being free from some faux "boundary-pushing" sex scene. Not just sex, but incest, sex with minors, incestual sex with minors and underage incest. Pick your favourite combo, the author certainly couldn't so he included them all! In fact, the entire crescendo of the book [spoiler alert!] is a fresh incest sandwich with Mamma Maureen as the meat. I have to question whether this really was the author's attempt at "making people think" and "challenging views" or just his sick fantasies disguised as fiction. We get it, Robert, the plot is about a foundation that encourages breeding and a future where such twisted things aren't taboo and their totally arbitrary and culturally dependent nature have been deconstructed and disposed. Maureen was simply a woman before her time, sure. But why the detail and sheer frequency?

As I mentioned above, this book also drags on with a frustrating amount of dialogue and detail in general, but especially in its injection of the author's distracted and unrefined views and his weakly disguised sexual fantasies. The whole plot could be delivered with as much significance and exposition in about 1/4 of the book's true length.

Aside from this, the story wasn't all that interesting, partially because it was, in fact, not delivered with much significance and exposition. I left it thinking, "what?". The plot was rushed, and the first 30-50% book really didn't add anything to it, it was a clumsily arrange diatribe and "universe building" excuse to talk about a promiscuous and amoralistic underage girl growing up to be a promiscuous and amoralistic incestous mother in an open marriage. It could've been so much more interesting if the same amount of detail spent building that half of that book was given to the actual plot and story, which was still only a minor proportion of the second half anyway (like I said, it only needed 1/4 of the length to do the same job). I was incredibly bored, but pushed on as I rarely can bring myself to give up on a book "just in case" (sunk cost, and all). Hence why it took me so long. In the end, I decided to make this book my first attempt at an audiobook, and sped through the remaining ~60% on 1.5x speed.

Overall, it wasn't a *bad* book, but it was an unfinished story tainted by excessive and lazy universe building very obviously centered and fueled around the author's own views, laced with periodic twisted sexual activity. It had potential, but didn't get there. I will probably try another Heinlein book, but perhaps something earlier in his work. I think I chose poorly, and am curious to see if others feel the same.

This one was a bit of a challenge for me to read all the way through. Although it starts with action, in the future, it quickly becomes a memoir of the main characters life through the 20th century. It often becomes rather slow and tedious with lots of names, dates and places that I could not always keep track of. It does have some of Heinlein's telling social commentary, and eventually gets more interesting. It should also be noted that it contains an unusually large amount of discussions of the characters sexual activity. No real steamy stuff, but everything from innocent teen exploration through marital bliss and on to adultery and incest is discussed repeatedly. Surprisingly it just got a little old after a while. Random Numbers is a great name for a cat though.