Between Planets

This nearly 75 year old book has travel between planets, aliens, intrigue, and brief romance. It also has a totalitarian regime, maltreatment of aliens and strongly curtailed civil rights.

This is the fifth published Heinlein juvenile, each featuring a young male protagonist meeting the adult world of responsibilities. Realistic challenges of travel meet up with the space opera versions of Venus and Mars, though we knew a lot less in 1951 than we do today.

For me, this story is about the characters. The Venusian dragon, the Chinese immigrant, and the old family friend are well described and smart, more than just caricature. Main character Don Harvey gets an education in the ways of the world(s) over a short 243 pages.

This is one of the juveniles I missed when I was of the proper age, perhaps because it was not as well known or distributed as the others. A younger me might have rated it 5 stars.