Novel review: Robert Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Devoured this one in a few evenings. It might be a good idea to mention that I opened it because I absolutely loved Starship Troopers and its title reminded me strongly of another of my favourites: The Dosadi Experiment. Got something quite different from my expectations, but not a bad surprise; in a few words: Australia in space.

On the whole, it is a very good novel. The AI depiction is pretty impressive even without considering its age, the live telling of "how to engineer a revolution" pretty gripping and the whole lore quite coherent and interesting. Especially the practical English dialect full of slang (you think the Cyberpunk franchise took choom from it, by the way?) that really deepens the immersion.

But it is not without faults. I can list at least those three:

• Exposition to the Loonie culture often borders on infodumping, too dense and clumsily introduced in nature. Also felt a bit preachy at times.
• They have a (literal) deus ex machina on their side, alright, but the oppressor makes way too many dumb mistakes; partly explained by the real powers being on Earth, yes. The revolution went too much like clockwork, really.
• I found most of the human characters pretty flat. This is obviously not the novel's focus, but a bit more introspection from the important characters would have been welcome.

In the end, a far cry from the genius terseness of his aforementioned older novel, but still in the good tenth of Sturgeon's law. I just know it could have been better executed.