When I told an engineering friend that I had Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky sitting around my room waiting to be read, he told me to read it right away. He was right, I should have read it right away.
Once I started it, I read Tunnel In The Sky in a period of less than 12 hours. Sure it's only about 214 pages long, but that means that it was interesting enough to read the whole way through.
Plot: Things go wrong on an absurd off-world survival test. Things are killed. Teenage romances occur...ish. There is mention of paper. Tiny mutant rabbits viciously attack an encampment. There are no poop jokes.
Characters: Likeable. A lot of them were two-dimensional, but nicely two-dimensional. There were several strong female characters as well.
Action: Several fights occur. Nothing naughty occurs. A lot of the suspense is political/survival related.
Ending: Agrivating yet not. I could have read more, but it is tied up pretty well in a semi-unexpected way.
Antagonist: There doesn't need to be one because the enemy is death/chaos/anarchy/alien animals.
I can't really describe it without giving away too much of the storyline. Thus, I should just say that it is incredibly well written sci-fi from the 50's. It is inventive (although the planet names sound like they were used by all 50's sci-fi writers), works with its different phases of story development well, has remarkably little sexism (especially for the 50's. I've read 80's books that were more sexist.), and has a constant edge of uncertainty that keeps the reader's interest the whole way through. Basically, it is a compelling and well written story about maintaining humanity in a dire situation.
I give Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky a 4 out of 5.
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