Still too much early-Heinlein manly men and weepy women characterizations, and I saw the end coming, but at least I didn’t roll my eyes through the _entire_ thing. An improvement!

By using an actor impersonating a political figure gradually coming to understand both the figure and the wider political situation, the character actually showed some believable personal growth through the story. I also found the latter half of the book, which was more concerned with political maneuvering within the circumstances, to be more interest than the more standard “space adventure” feeling of the first half, more interesting. Overall (judging from reading two earlier Heinlein works recently, and my memories of the later works I read when I was younger) it kind of feels like a bridge between the earlier space adventures and the later more political plots.