Red Thunder (Thunder and Lightning, #1)

Sold to me as an homage to the heinlein juveniles, I was dead keen to get into this. There are a lot of nods to RAH - especially names, but the style and milieu also fit into the groove (although there are differences).

Chapters 13 and 28 sang out to me, and the whole story is full of the exciting and drive you'd expect from something from Heinlein in his prime, with perhaps an older, somewhat modernised layer of late-teenhood to peer through. To sum, an exciting adventure.

Now this was a fun ride! Varley's tribute to Heinlein's Young Adult work. That being said this was far more adult than you would expect. Whilst it was upbeat and gung ho, it was certainly realistic with moments of absolute pathos. A rollicking read that took me back to the kind of thing I devoured by the ton in my long, lost youth and would go out of my way to find. This was a very modern book though, centred in a very plausible near future. The piece of handwavium that was necessary to make the plot work was handled gracefully but the book was about the characters, not the 'tech'. A delight.