Slight spoilers ahead! Nothing major, just the overall idea, but I’m marking nonetheless.
So, I just finished SiaSL. I enjoyed the ride, specially the first half. I found the characters quite endearing and captivating, even Jubal. I know he is generally considered annoying and yeah, the book is filled with subtle and not-so-subtle sexism and other -isms, and I completely get why it ruins the book for many people. Still, as a woman, I found him fun to read about; that kind of character you enjoy in page, but would get on your nerves in real life. I liked the worldbuilding and everyone felt real, even if their personalities were exaggerated.
The second half was more, well, questionable, and I was very bothered by Jill’s (and, I would assume, the author’s) opinion on assault. Thankfully, that isn’t repeated and I managed to get over it (still, fucking yikes, Heinlein). I took the second half as it was: a more fun, wacky adventure, filled with martian weirdness and antics. It felt like a very different book than the first half, but it wasn’t bad, really.
I was, however, taken aback by the very sexually charged nature of it.As an asexual person, I don’t feel sexual attraction and don’t see sex as an act of love and affection. Rationally, I know it’s very human and natural, but the instinct of it all just doesn’t click. So, reading about Mike’s take on sex, and the way he builds a cult following around this idea of universal sexual closeness was… very odd. I’m agnostic, but I enjoy reading about religion, and I liked the book’s pantheistic take on God and the nature of the universe as a unity. If I were to believe in God, that would be my idea of it. However, as an asexual person, the jump from that to sexual union felt really weird. Perhaps it feels less unnatural to allosexuals, but I just couldn’t buy it. You know when you have a discussion with someone and they are making good points, but then they start defending a weird idea out of the blue and you get a whiplash? That’s what it felt like to me. Not necessarily bad, just pretty odd and voyeuristic. At least the sex wasn’t explicitly described, so I could just glance over it.
Overall, I liked it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the second half had a bit more plot and less commentary, but I like it for what it is. I completely get why it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, though. If you are not very philosophically interested in ideas of God, or has a solid monotheistic faith, or like your books with more realism and higher stakes, or gets whiplash when the nature of a book changes a bit too much from chapter to chapter… I think your enjoyment will be quite lessened. Aside from being asexual, I believe I’m the right kind of reader for it, so it fit me more than it would someone else.
Heinlein could also just be better at keeping track of time jumps, tbh. It bothered me that, in the second half, I never really knew how much time passed between chapters.
by Leticia_the_bookworm