The Rolling Stones, by Robert Heinlein

 
Read
In Half-Price, over the course of several Mondays.

Bottom Line
Very definitely young Heinlein, but fun to read nevertheless.  While this one doesn't contain any of the great leaps of imagination found in his later books, it plants the seeds for later novels (think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).  Furthermore, although it's billed as juvenalia, there's no reason why adults wouldn't enjoy sitting down with this one.

Full Review
In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that I'm somewhat of a rabid Heinlein fan. My introduction to his fiction came in the form of The Cat Who Walked through Walls. Despite the fact that I was miffed by the ending (ending? there's no ending to that darn book!), I kept reading.

Stones, unlike some of Heinlein's later work, stands fully on its own. It requires no familiarity with the "Future History" novels, although readers familiar with them will be pleased to find the indomitable Hazel Stone as well as those mischievous twins Castor and Pollux.

Heinlein described the novel as about a pair of entrepreneurial twins who are always getting into trouble and whose grandmother is always getting them out. This is accurate, so far as back cover descriptions go, but it fails to convey the core of the novel. This is, at heart, a book about frontiers, about civilization, and about the choices between the two. The Stones set off from Luna City - that once wild outpost, now safely tamed and therefore no fun at all - to Mars, intending to satisfy the familial wanderlust. Once at Mars, however, they discover that it, like Luna City, has been taken over by the bureaucrats. Off again, this time to the asteroid belt, where at last they find the wild frontier town they've been looking for. When we leave the Stones, they are setting off again, this time for Venus. The implication, of course, is that there will always be one more outpost of civilization in the wilderness, one more frontier to explore. The excitement, of course, lies in the adventures the family finds along the way - everything from a nasty outbreak of space measles to a run-in with the long arm of the law.

Structurally speaking, there's more going on here than a rip-roaring plot and a rambunctious bunch of characters. The plot, which has enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning pages as quickly as she can read them, flows naturally from the characters rather than attempting to push them around. This is intended for a middle grade audience, so there's nothing very heavy here - a far cry from the almost existential questioning of Stranger or the philosophical mutterings of Lazarus Long. Even so, it previews the question of when too much civilization becomes a bad thing.

Finally, keep an eye out for the technology. Heinlein's predictions, while a bit off the wall in terms of Mars and Venus, are surprisingly accurate on just about everything else.

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet

 
Ken Follet writes spy novels.  The introduction to the book speaks of some nervousness on the part of his publishers that a book by Follet about a cathedral would be too far out of genre and wouldn't sell.  Follet needn't have worried.  The Pillars of the Earth, nominally a book about the building of a great cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England, has little to do with architecture.  Instead it is a thriller, a classic plot driven novel that twists and turns according to the author's master plan.

Had the book been half its size, I probably would have enjoyed it.  Toward the end, Follet began summing up the action from the beginning of the book in the form of reflections on the part of the main characters.  This is always a sign that a heavier hand is needed in the editing process.  Furthermore, for all the action in the novel, nothing really happened.  The cathedral, after much delay and frustration, was finally built (no spoiler there, I'm sure).

The minor characters lived quiet lives of unimportance, fading in and out of the action by way of barely believable plot devices.  The major characters were remarkably one-dimensional - the villain of the piece so incredibly evil that his machinations became comical rather than infuriating.  The heroine was rewarded, after a life of patient if not especially pious sacrifice, with everything she had ever wanted.  Ditto the hero.

Bottom line: props to Follet for writing it - from the introduction, I gather that this was his dream book. Unless you're going to be stuck on an airplane, a hospital waiting room, or somewhere else you're in need of reading material that doesn't require any thought to process, I'd skip this one.