Rating: Summary: Falls apart halfway through Review: The first half of this novel has all the trappings of a fun Heinlein adventure. The story opens with a mysterious murder in a crowded restaurant, at the dinner table of Richard Ames and his lover, Gwen. Their investigation leads Richard and Gwen from the space station where they live to the lunar colonies. The interaction between Richard and Gwen during their pursuit of the killer is the high point of the story.Yet halfway through, Heinlein seems to change his mind about what kind of story he wants to tell. With one twist of the plot, he completely abandons the murder mystery tale and adopts an entirely new one. As revealed by the blurb on the back cover, Richard finds himself entangled in an intrigue that spans alternate realities, allowing Heinlein to bring in characters from some of his previous works, such as Lazarus Long, Jubal Harshaw, and Mike. The sudden shift might not be so bad, but this new plot has almost no connection with all the events that filled the first half of the story. Heinlein writes off as unimportant all the question raised at the beginning. Also, as another reviewer noted, the playful interaction between Richard and Gwen that made the first half so enjoyable is greatly diminished in the second half. Despite its flaws, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls should appeal to most devoted Heinlein fans. Those new to Heinlein are probably better off starting with one of his more celebrated works, such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. For a more lighthearted Heinlein adventure similar to the first half of this novel, try Friday.
Rating: Summary: 4 for the first half, 2 for the second half Review: I haven't read Heinlein in a while, so for some explicable reason, when I started back I chose this book. Thanks to reading other readers reviews I'm not giving up on Heinlein, as this book almost lead me to do. The book is a recounting of events by the main character, Richard Ames, aka Colin Campbell. He finds himself like a snowball in an avalanche taken in by a series of events he does not fully understand. The first half of this book describes how he and his wife(Gwen) deal with the situation. It is entertaining and fast paced. Their banter and their relationship is interesting to follow. However, the book makes a major shift when the "real" plot behind this book kicks in. The author becomes enamored with details. These details are negotiable as well, what is fact one minute is fiction the next. Too many characters are introduced and their inter-relationships are way too hard to follow. This last half of the book, deals with getting the main character to join this group that got him in this mess to start with. Until the last 10 pages, you do not think he is planning on participating and even then, you are not sure what has happened. A spotty attempt at explaining previous events is done in less than two pages and even then, you have no idea what precipitated those events. The ending is depressing. One thing struck me and this is my own commentary from reading Heinlein as an adult versus when I was a teen, is how sexually obsessed he seems to be. Enough said, not a soap box. As a teen, it did not stand out, as an adult it does. Also, it was interesting to see with all the new age technology described here, ballistic tubes, time travel, etc., there is not one cell phone.
Rating: Summary: a waste of time and paper Review: I agree with several other reviewers here that the first half of the book was entertaining but the ending is so boring as to seem irrevelant. Some great books such as 2001 have endings that leave you scratching your head but this does not detract from the whole. This book was so bad that i threw it away after having read 350 out of 388 pages. I simply did'nt care what happened and this is one of the few times i feel cheated by wasting my time reading a book. If I were on a deserted island and this was the only book available I think I find a better use for it than bothering to finish the last 38 pages.
Rating: Summary: Cheated Review: I am a Heinlein fan. I have read something like 5 of his books and have either loved or at least enjoyed every one of them. That is why this book, the Cat Who Walks Through Walls, surprised me so much. It is among the 5 worst books that I have ever read, period. It starts great in the manner of a sci-fi murder mystery. Half way through, though, the first half of the book is thrown out the window and is rendered pointless. A group of time travelers wants the lead character to help them with a dangerous mission. Why? They never really explain. However, they manage to save him from almost certain death in an ambush led by someone trying to collect some reward money by bringing him in. The next 150 pages are spent trying to convince the main character that he should join them in their cause to correct time for the advancement of the human race (yawn). He says no all the way until the second to last chapter. I was wondering how this was going to end, since it was leading to a rather weak finale and I had all of 8 pages to go. The final 8 pages explain that the main character actually DID do this mission, the mission had gone bad, and now he was dying. However, if the people who had managed to mortally wound him, his wife, and his cat returned (who were they??) he was going to take at least 6 of them out with him. The first rule in writing is "show me, don't tell me". In this case, Heinlein managed to do neither! He didn't show or tell how things got to their ending! You find out after the fact that it had gone through. 150 pages of boring conversation, 8 pages of post-mission analysis. What about the 50+ pages that could have explained the actual mission?! That would probably have been good reading! Heinlein, what were you thinking?
Rating: Summary: Good for the first half Review: I thought Starship Troopers was a very well written work, with only a few flaws, so I though I'd try another one of Heinlein's books. And for the first two thirds of the book it had the feel of a classic sci-fi adventure story. Wonderful plot moving at a breakneck pace filled with delightfully improbable escapes and peppered with interesting characters. Then, suddenly, it hits a wall. All of the action stops, the characters become vapid and empty-headed, and you lose all interest in the story. I find it particularly disappointing that a book that has such a marvelous beginning should lift me up and than leave me stranded the way that this one does. Another major flaw with this book is the dialogue. I found the dialogue in Starship Troopers irritating, but not to a point that it interfered with my enjoyment of the plot. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, on the other hand, is filled with what is meant to be cleaver banter among the main characters but comes off as puerile, trite, infantile, and just plain annoying. This kind of dialogue would look amateurish in a comic book; in a novel it's just insulting. Particularly, I find the female characters' attempts to be sassy so wooden and clumsy that I've found myself wincing in pain. I don't know anything about Heinlein's personal life, but I'd be willing to wager that he didn't spend much time around women. I've herd parrots provide more inspired conversation than these broads do. The best way to enjoy this book is to read the first 200 pages, and set it down and make up your own ending. Anything that you can make up on is going to be better than what's written down.
Rating: Summary: Waste of my time Review: Maybe Heinlein fans were delighted by the inclusion of all his former characters in the last third of this book, but I, who had no prior knowledge of the author, was left feeling cheated and alienated. What was the point of the first two hundred pages? Why was I reading this story if he wasn't going to finish it properly? There was no indication beforehand that this was where the book was heading. It's painfully obvious that Heinlein wrote himself into a corner, so he just decided to toss out the entire plot in favor of a new one, which was extremely lazy and arrogant of him. Because something is Science Fiction, that shouldn't give the author free reign to do whatever the hell he wants. There are certain elements of storytelling that are basic, no matter the genre. There was no excuse in this case. If he wanted to write about time travel and other dimensions and throw in all his old characters, fine, but he should have done it in a totally different book. A story should be "beginning, middle, end", not, "beginning, middle, boring pile of unrelated garbage that goes nowhere."
Rating: Summary: Not worthy to carry the Master's Name on the cover Review: On occasion ~ "Expanded Universe" and this book, for two examples ~ Heinlein has expressed the opinion that to write is a disease which may only be excised through the process of writing something. Anything. Unfortunately, the latter was his choice in preparing this book, so what we have here is going on four hurndred pages, some large number of thousand words (Heinlein always could produce), of something which may have provided relief for the author, but gives none to his reader. The first half reads like the Heinlein of old, almost; looks as though it is going to be a fine adventure story along the lines of "Harsh Mistress" or "Spacesuit" with a pair of brand new heroes who are as attractive as any he's ever produced. Sadly, partway through, he succombed to the desire to tie everything together (always a Heinlein weakness) with every other book he ever wrote. Thus, in come Lazerus Long, the Burroughs, Boondock, Jubal Harshaw, and the rest, and out go intelligent story-telling, character development, and the reader's pleasure. All of a sudden the plot hinges on the rescue of what is possibly my favourite (certainly in the top five) Heinlein character ~ Mike, the computer behind Adam Selene ~ from Lunar City, in a different time-line, a different section of the multiverse all together. I take second place to no one in my desire to see Mike again, but not this way; never this way. Unfortunately, a secondary frustration with this book is that Heinlein himself is caught up in the time-paradoxes he creates, and doesn't seem to realise it. He shows people erased, shows a memory fading, as a result of a history change, but doesn't realise that the Burroughs themselves ought to have been erased, since they can be shown never to have existed in their own timeline. This is a minor quibble, though, compared with the greater disappointment of seeing a wonderful, strong, genius may not be too strong, talent wasted on this dreck. And that's not even mentioning the cat....
Rating: Summary: The Cat Who Can't Get It Up Review: As a boy, the new Boy Scout "Boy's Life" magazine with a Heinlein story was a red letter day in my life. By age 12, I had read everything in my local library by the "Dean" and convinced my mother to get her library card so I could check the adult Heinlein books out till I was old enough to get my own card. By my 20's I was reading some of Heinlein's classics for the 4th or 5th time. Then I bought "Cat". It was the first book I've ever thrown in the trash unfinished. I'd noticed a tendency of Heinlein to get more and more sexually explicit in his books and figured it was the "007" effect, more public demand for those type books and the sexual revolution. In "Cat", the explicitness was more "I can't do this stuff anymore so let me share my fantasies with you." Since then, I look back in regret at the loss of a great hard science writer of fiction to the old man that wrote sexual fantacy in the league of "Barbarella."
Rating: Summary: Shocking to the reader, Review: I am a great lover of the words of Heinlein. But this book has got to be one of his worst. While it has some very interesting quantum physics threads, and some interesting character as aware entity moments, it does not hold together. The relationships of the main character and his children (near the end of the book) are confusing and more explicit than needed/wanted. The 'mysteries' the main character was trying to solve fell apart like wet tissue paper. I was dissapointed that the ending did not allow resolution of many issues the book tried to explore. What was heinlein thinking?
Rating: Summary: You have to think Review: Scientific American has a writing style that makes the first paragraph easy to understand then gets tougher as it goes. Heinlein wrote much the same and many books have received the same reaction. "Liked the first, but he wanders..." Since so many bad books have the same problem, one should consider how to tell the difference between bad and Heinlein. Look at the last ten pages of Cat. Very tightly written. Almost like the filming of the second bank robery in Thomas Crown (first film). I had to read it several times to see what was happening. Consider the fight in Glory Road. Driving the car at night without brakes? Metaphor. The publisher wanted to cut that one. I think that the last part put another dimension to the story and made it relevant to the future history. Skip it or denegrate if if you like, but be aware that you are missing the most intellegent part of the book. Or try again. I am still working on Finnegan's Wake.
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