This does not happen often to me, but: WTF have I just read. (Yes, I know the background of the novel.)

And I haven't had so much trouble actually rating a book for a while. Oh well ... There are reasons this one has not worked for me, but it's too late to dive into details. (And Dick, especially "The Man in the High Castle", is still very much worth reading.)

Very strange, awkward way of linking various myths into one narrative.

Was PKD crazy?! This one definitely makes me want to dig into his personal life a little bit.

DNF. Too weird. Gave up very early

What the actual f did I read. I did some research into PKD because this book was just

Now look, I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to fiction and sci-fi. I've dabbled in the bizarre and played along with the downright silly.
But this book is absolute nonsense. There'll be a few spoilers here for the first half of the book but honestly, I'm only skimming the surface.
TW: mental health, suicide, institutionalization

Horselover Fat, I'm just gonna call him Horse, watches a dear friend resign herself to committing suicide in a rational and calm manner and that juxtaposition pushes him over the edge into psychosis. He receives a clay pot from a friend that 'has god in it', although that's never really explored, makes friends with a host of characters and starts writing an exe-genesis. One of his friends is very cynical because he watched his own cat get run over. One of his friends is partially blind and deaf from a cancer in remission. One day some kids shine a pink laser on him and he notes that he's seen this color of pink before and that it's a foreign body, probably god, sending him information from space.
That is our baseline premise, around page 25.
So he starts transcribing it as weird thoughts in a journal, some examples of these mysticisms:

The Head Apollo is about to return. St. Sophia is going to be born again; she was not acceptable before. The Buddha is in the park. Siddhartha sleeps (but is going to awaken). The time you have waited for has come.

Or even:

The Mind is not talking to us but by means of us. Its narrative passes through us and its sorrow infuses us irrationally. As Plato discerned, there is a streak of the irrational in the World Soul.

Now, look, I'm all for alternative mysticisms to justify character motivation in fiction. But this is pure gobbledegook. Granted, Horse himself is meant to be narrating the whole thing which is probably why it makes very little sense.
Anyway, for all of his prophesying, Horse tries to commit suicide when his wife leaves with his son in tow and winds up in the OC mental hospital, playing Go Fish! with a homely Jehovah's witness. During this time the story picked up a little and I wondered if I might indeed be able to finish the book. Alas, Horse soon goes in for a conversation with one of his doctors:

" The Hermetic alchemists knew of it in theory from ancient texts but could not duplicate it, since they could not locate the dormant burid plásmate."
"But you're saying the plásmate - the Logos - was dug up at Nag Hammadi!"
"Yes, when the codices were read."
"You're sure it wasn't in dormant seed form at Qumran? In Cave Five?"
"Well", Fat said, uncertainly.
"Where did the plásmate originally come from?"
After a pause Fat said, "From another star system."
"You wish to identify that star system?"
"Sirius", Fat said.
"Then you believe that the Dogon People of the western Sudan are the source of Christianity."
"They use the fish sign", Fat said. "For Nommo, the benign twin."
"Who would be Form I or Yang"
"Right," Fat said.

Here endeth the lesson. If you liked all of that: the illusions to western and eastern mysticism with a strong dash of bonkers thrown in, then you'll probably get along quite well with this book.
I was totally lost in the mindless detail and the complete lack of guidance by the narrator. The overall effect was a book that was boring.
I've enjoyed other PKD in the past, e.g. [b:Deus Irae|15814416|Deus Irae|Philip K. Dick|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348098647s/15814416.jpg|60252] but just couldn't continue with this.
DNF'ed at 102 pages.

I give up. I can't understand this shit!

I didn't like this book; it was an odd mix of 1st and 3rd person, plus it was only reading other reviews that I realised why that was. It read very oddly, and there was a *lot* of what I'd liken to conspiracy-style stuff only it was about religion, most of which I'm afraid I skipped over.

It improved towards the end, but that's not saying much IMO!

Of course, from other reviews, I understand that I've picked probably the worst book of Philip's to start with! Oh well! At least I know there's hope for the other books, so I'm not going to get rid of them without reading! *{;-)