Having seen this advertised on television (although I haven't watched it due to me not having Amazon) I was immediately interested in the concept of what the world would have been like if Germany and Japan had won World War 2. Not being a book club book or being aware of anyone who had a copy I could borrow High Castle was the first book in a long time that I had gone out and bought for myself. Well I hadn’t actually gone out I clicked a button on a computer screen.
Did you know Dick is the guy who wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Aka Blade Runner)?
Do you know Total Recall and Minority Report are also based on novels by him?
Do you know the K stands for Kindred?
Just throwing in a little lunchtime trivia for you there.
Anyway I found it very confusing at first, it jumped around a lot and took a while to seem to fall into place. Something that I've noticed is I always struggle when foreign names are rife in a text. Be it French, Chinese, Russian, Italian you name it, I struggle. This is especially true when it comes to surnames which a lot of war novels, that I like to read, have. I don't know why but I just have real difficulty recalling who is who. So a book that features German and Japanese military figures was a tax on my recollection skills.
I did afterwards read wikis account of the book and found the explanation as to how the world had been carved up and what the various acronyms meant (PSA, SD etc.) really helpful, worth a read if you're confused.
I also struggled with the writing style. I got that Dick was trying to portray the Japanese way of speaking and that Americans under their rule had picked up on this, however the inner monologue-ing (slightly Go Set A Watchman esque) made it hard at times to work out what was actually happening. For example Juliana and Joe in the hotel room in Denver.
The book went in a totally different way to what I was expecting. I don’t necessarily mean the ending, more the storey as a whole. I didn’t expect I-Ching, a novel within a novel (The Grasshopper) and handmade jewellery containing Wu. I think I wanted more of a thriller, more explanation in to the alternative history and the workings, uprises and resistance and it's not that at all.
I think it would benefit from being digested somewhat more and (although if I'm honest this is unlikely) another read. The book isn’t very long though, it took me about a week to read but as I have 44 books left on my bookshelf that are as yet unread and Judi Blume to tackle I might just have to leave it as is. An interesting concept but not the way I expected it to go.
Did you know Dick is the guy who wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Aka Blade Runner)?
Do you know Total Recall and Minority Report are also based on novels by him?
Do you know the K stands for Kindred?
Just throwing in a little lunchtime trivia for you there.
Anyway I found it very confusing at first, it jumped around a lot and took a while to seem to fall into place. Something that I've noticed is I always struggle when foreign names are rife in a text. Be it French, Chinese, Russian, Italian you name it, I struggle. This is especially true when it comes to surnames which a lot of war novels, that I like to read, have. I don't know why but I just have real difficulty recalling who is who. So a book that features German and Japanese military figures was a tax on my recollection skills.
I did afterwards read wikis account of the book and found the explanation as to how the world had been carved up and what the various acronyms meant (PSA, SD etc.) really helpful, worth a read if you're confused.
I also struggled with the writing style. I got that Dick was trying to portray the Japanese way of speaking and that Americans under their rule had picked up on this, however the inner monologue-ing (slightly Go Set A Watchman esque) made it hard at times to work out what was actually happening. For example Juliana and Joe in the hotel room in Denver.
The book went in a totally different way to what I was expecting. I don’t necessarily mean the ending, more the storey as a whole. I didn’t expect I-Ching, a novel within a novel (The Grasshopper) and handmade jewellery containing Wu. I think I wanted more of a thriller, more explanation in to the alternative history and the workings, uprises and resistance and it's not that at all.
I think it would benefit from being digested somewhat more and (although if I'm honest this is unlikely) another read. The book isn’t very long though, it took me about a week to read but as I have 44 books left on my bookshelf that are as yet unread and Judi Blume to tackle I might just have to leave it as is. An interesting concept but not the way I expected it to go.
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