Glory Road

By Robert Heinlein

E.C. Gordon was kind of at loose ends when he saw an interesting ad in the paper that began: "Are you a coward? This is not for you." Long story short, and because of a beautiful woman, E.C. joins the woman and her assistant on a mission on another world. They will battle monsters and alienate the locals and get into misunderstandings with each other and E.C. gets to be the strong, leading man who comes to the rescue of the "damsel" in distress. But as E.C. finds out later, his true love isn't really that much of a damsel, no matter how much she may look like one.

I read this book because it was recommended to me, but it is not a book that I would recommend to anyone else in return. It is not amusing, which I was hoping it would be, and as far as the adventure goes, it doesn't stack up to other books in the genre. I also found the premise that E.C. was the only guy in all the known universes who could accomplish the mission to be rather unbelievable. And finally, I didn't care for Heinlein's hero beating his lover's butt when she does something he didn't like. I found it dismaying, condescending and stupid. I know the author was a creature of his time, but that kind of sexism in a novel is just off-putting.