I'm gonna give it 3 but really this is a 2.5 for me and it's tough because it has its interesting moments and some moments are so absurd they are funny but there is a large portion of the book that is so absurd that is simply absurd and lost me at times. I get that this is sort of autobiographical in a sense but even still absurd ramblings are still often a chore to read. I think the second half of the novel was much better than the first half , however I don't see myself continuing with the trilogy. My next PKD novel will have to be back to more of what I got in Do Androids Dream or the Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick always blows my mind! this one was hard to get through at times, I could only read a few chapters a day, sometimes only a few pages a day but It really came together at the end.

There's something very discomforting about reading the religious conspiracies of a self-professed madman and thinking "yeah, that sounds about right."

WTF

If you ever wanted to know how is like to see the world from the eyes of a severely mentally ill person, this is the ideal book for you.

At least two of the main characters are alter-egos of the author, that suffers in real life from schizophrenia (sees and hears things that are not there and has disorganized toughs) with delusions of grandeur (thinks that he is in contact with superior beings that have chosen him to give him special information and a mission).

The entire narrative is a derange hodgepodge of events given mystic and religious interpretations taken from a wide range of cultures an traditions like Christianity, Gnosticism, Hermetism, Greek mitology, Dogon mitology, Judaism and a very long etc. all intermix with a few science fiction elements, mainly satellites and artificial intelligence.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the fact that the author - and by extension his alter egos - knows that he is crazy, but he can't do anything about it. He has moments of lucidity where he knows that nothing of what he believes is real and is all in his mind but he then continues with his crazy fantasies just the same.

Because you are following the train of though of a crazy person, this book is not an easy read, but it's perhaps the best written representation of mental illness that you will be able to find.

So this is another one I've had on my shelf for more than 20 years and I was always worried I wouldn't like it. It was pretty strange, but interesting enough to me to be enjoyable. Someone said the 2nd book is better and then there was supposed to be a 3rd book, but he never wrote it, but he did write a book that "works well" as an ending to the series, so I'm really curious about how that works.

Reading this really brought me back to the 90's, when I was reading Robert Anton Wilson and a bunch of postmodern stuff. One of my close friends talked like the main character in this book and it makes me really want to reconnect with him (it's been at least 8 years).

There was a line where the author (as a character in the story) says "Sometimes I dream..." and a person replies, "I'll put that on your gravestone." I immediately looked online to see if that line was on Philip K Dick's gravestone, but was disappointed to find out it was not.

This is a very strange book, pretty much like any Phillip K. Dick book. The ending of this book simply surprised me, not because of what happened, just that I wasn't expecting the book to end there. Part of the reason for my surprise is that the book had extra content after it ended. I enjoyed this book, but I think it should be approach with caution. Your experience may vary...