Book Reviews: Glory Road and Dark is the Sun
Glory Road
By Robert Heinlein
Glory Road was a fun little book by Heinlein. The entire book was written in his favorite first-person-narrator-who’s-sarcastic-as-hell style and spans about 200 pages or so. It follows the tale of a young Korean War vet (you can glean this easily from the story) who’s soon whisked away to another universe/dimension by a woman he meets on a nude beach in France. Ah, classic Heinlein.
The woman, accompanied by a squire of some sort, seems determined to name our narrator her “champion” to do various acts of bravery and assist her in certain quests. And for the first half or so of the book, that’s about it.
But… the last third or so is completely different, and features the narrator and his Lady settling down — the book loses its lighthearted touch by this point and becomes very serious and downright depressing, as you’ll see. But there, I’ve told enough. 
I love reading Heinlein’s novels simply for the writing style, though — his books are some of the first ones I try to recommend to non-SF readers.
Dark is the Sun
By Philip Jose Farmer
This book still befuddles me now, even after a month or two of reading it. I can’t tell if it was a translation or not (I don’t think Philip Jose Farmer is foreign, though I’m not sure — Spanish, maybe?), but it sure reads like one.
The sentence structure is strange, the character development is weird, the story seems to jump around here and there — I really don’t know what to make of it. Anyone know?
The story has a neat backstory, though — taking place something like billions of years in the future, during the time of the Big Crunch, it features mankind in its last stages of existence, a broken people returned to tribal ways, worshipping old gods that haven’t been seen in years.
Even though reading this book could be a chore, I loved the amazing world that Farmer created — on this dying Earth are relics from billions of years of science and development. You’re constantly discovering the relics of lost civilizations that have risen, and fallen, and risen back again.
