Quite a few people (=a significant number) were pleasantly surprised.

… all adults seemed to her subjects for laughter, so self-regarding, so pretentious.

She was oblivious of all around her, and her facial twistings and scrunchings were droll.

Motorized on the vehicle of will, she rode spaceward, timeward, back again, back again into the world she had left behind, hurtling past planets shifting in their orbits like women turning over in their beds […]