Philip K. Dick's later years were absolutely wild. His entire experience with that celestial pink light that beamed down at him and gave him a million earth-shattering revelations that he wrote down in his massive Exegesis and also worked through with the VALIS trilogy of novels is still incredible to me.
I read the first VALIS about a year ago and was absolutely baffled by his autofictional attempt at processing his real-life experience through his alter ego character named Horselover Fat. There wasn't too much plot and much more abstract, philosophical/spiritual rambling about his newfound knowledge that honestly virtually fried my brain at points, which made that whole thing more interesting as a novelty and for what it stands for than being an actually entertaining read.
So, when I decided to continue this trilogy with the second book, The Divine Invasion, I was sort of bracing for something equally mind-numbing. But I was very positively surprised.

The Divine Invasion isn't a direct sequel as it tells a mostly independent story of new characters in a world that's presumably built on some of Dick's "enlightenment" and new-found beliefs. Details of the previous VALIS book are mentioned, as well as the pink light from Dick's real-life reports, to make it clear that this is set in the same world, but the plot has very different goals. Instead of unravelling himself through a fictional version of his, here there is an actual science-fiction story more akin to his usual writing with some elements reminding me a lot of other books by his, like Ubik for example.
There are still some grand, abstract ideas of religion and philosophy and dimensions and reality in here, as this essentially deals with a return of the messiah who eventually gets challenged by other celestial entities with deep references to real-life religions, but unlike the first VALIS book you don't get overwhelmed by walls of rambly text this time.
The story is actually paced pretty well and explores some genuinely engaging ideas. It's generally an interesting combination of futuristic science-fiction with hard religious elements.

I was a bit let down by the ending to be honest, but up until then I was pretty hooked and had quite a good time. Maybe the low expectations after the predecessor book helped with that, but I would genuinely recommend this one to people that have already read the big, famous Dick novels. I couldn't necessarily say the same for VALIS.
I'm very curious now where the third book in the series, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Dick's final finished novel, takes this whole thing.