Philip K. Dick, "The Man in the High Castle"
Well, that lack of sleep turned into full-sickness. I haven�t had a cigarette or a drink in four days. I�ve been sleeping for at least 14 hours each day, I�ve swallowed four gallons worth of juice, eight cans of Campbell�s soup, and I�ve downed half a bottle of Nyquil. I�m still not feeling all that hot, and I seem to have a fever.
So in between spurts of bleary-eyed coughing fits, I read this book. Good move. This is supposed to be great, by whatever standard you want to judge that by. It did win a Hugo award for best novel, but I just didn�t get it. I mean, I got it, but he has about eight characters, and only three of them reach any sort of conclusion at the end. The others just sort of fade away.
No, I don�t need closure for everything, but why did we pay all this attention to them at the beginning, if they just weren�t that important? Arrrgh, it�s making my head hurt (more) just thinking about it.
I don�t know, maybe it�s a good thing that I didn�t really care for this, as I�ve had the urge to pick up a lot of his books before, simply because I hear about how great he is. While the collection of short stories that I read a while back was pretty good, this was marginal. I�ll give him one more chance, and then I�m moving on. As for now, I�m going back to bed.
