" Philip K. Dick. I am not a huge fan. I do have some respect for some of his knowledge and vocabulary, but not in how he synthesized it into his writing. It's always clear to me that he does not understand anyone other than himself or his myopic perceptions of how people behave. He has some clever plot tricks and some descriptive chops, but I am always left flat because I find it hard to sympathize with most of his characters. This book is no different. I enjoyed the allusions to the arcane religious dogma and to the 30 Years War, but I did not see how any of these characters could stand one another. Occasionally funny dialogue, but mostly just a lot of preaching and bitching, which is probably what it was like to hang around him. Dick is a prisoner of himself. Angel Archer is a doormat, and when she does get the chance to truly be helpful (something she usually only offers to do when she knows they won't accept her assistance) she clings to the most shallow parts of herself, even going against the desire to offer the help that Dick had showed just a few pages before. Even her music knowledge and record collector bent was not very believable to me, being a past record store employee myself. Tim Archer was just a self-absorbed egomaniac, not in touch with anything outside of his books and vocation (Dick does a fine job of expressing this, an easy feat), his son, Jeff is just a head-case with few exhibited sympathetic qualities, Kirsten is just a shallow bitch, and her son Bill, a schizophrenic (more specifically a hebephrenic, a term I was unaware of) is the only character it seems Dick could create any sliver of sympathy for, yet his condition just makes him more pitiful than sympathetic. All in all, a nice quick read and full of nice heady vocabulary to stimulate you, but just understand, it's still a pretty empty experience, like the life of Philip (annoyingly one L) K. Dick most likely was. "
— Albert, 2/18/2014