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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Way too much preaching., 16 Jul 2005
This book has an intriguing premise. Our protagonist, Alexander Hergensheimer, a Christian fundamentalist trapped in an unhappy marriage, finds that without warning he is shifted to different versions of Earth, at the same point in space and time, but with different events leading up to the current point (different levels of technology; different political climates; different religious norms). All his possessions are lost each time except the clothes he is wearing.After the first such shift, he meets Margrethe, who becomes his lover, and thereafter his accepted "wife". She starts to shift with him, and their relationship endures despite the awkwardness of shifting without any warning. There are some interesting commentaries the book makes: at one point, the national religion of America is Islam, but the "Americanism" of the inhabitants remains ("ready for some good 'ol Muslim hospitality?"). And we find in one world a Hereditary President of the United States of America and Canada, placed there because of the population's innate need for a monarch. Some of these themes are refreshing and thought-provoking. But much of the book is an uncomfortable, thinly-disguised religious commentary by the author, where he attempts to propound his (uninteresting) views of sex, religion, crime, afterlife, and so on by having the plot follow through some fairly convoluted (and sometimes repetitive) territory. In this sense, it reads like a sermon dressed up in a story; perhaps "parable" is a better term. The character of Magrethe is utterly flat. She falls immediately and totally in love with Alex and continues to follow him and to indulge his every whim without any apparent reciprocity or justification on his part. Likewise Alex simply will not shut up about religion, even although Magrethe doesn't share either his religious or moral background. There is no substance or chemistry to the relationship, even although it forms one of the backbones of the book. The underlying premise (that of beings manipulated by higher powers for their own amusement) is just not enough to sustain all the other tooth-grinding nonsense.
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by Heinlein Robert A.
by Robert A. Heinlein
by Robert A Heinlein
by Robert A. Heinlein
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