The Man in the High Castle
Ratings474
Average rating3.5
This book portrays a intriguing view of the world and paints a vivid picture of the competing superpowers and the effect it has on the world and even more so, it's inhabitants. I have two issues with it though.
Firstly, there is too much navel gazing, nearly all the the characters seem to be weighed down with internal angst about their social position. This personal angst is a character trait common to Dick and is not in itself a bad thing, but there is too much of it in this book.
Secondly, there is no real story. There are the stories of a number of individuals, that you hope will be tied together in a coherent ending, but that doesn't really happen. Some of the stories overlap, but nothing comes to a meaningful conclusion, the book ends and that's that.
Phenomenal alternate history idea written in the author's unique voice. Dick masterfully blends imagination and history in this dystopian vision of what could have happened if the Allies had lost WWll.
really interesting premise but the ending kind of fizzled out and felt very unsatisfactory. Still, I think this is a type of book that will stick with me for a long time.
The concept is intriguing (Germany and Japan winning WW II) sure, but nothing actually happens in this book. There is no real plot
SPOILERS:
This is the whole story:
1) a German spy meets a Japanese admiral and warns him Germany may drop a hydrogen bomb on Japan
2) a young lady meets the author of a book depicting a world where Germany lost the war.
3) a Jewish man makes and sells some jewellery.
I previously watched the TV show when it released in ~2015 and I enjoyed it quite a bit! Reading the book a couple years later I expected it to be different but not this different. The TV show leans more into sci-fi with alternative realities. The book suggests and maybe implies it with Tagomi's spiritual experience. As a result, I cannot call this book sci-fi. For alt-history though it's pretty great! I rather enjoyed the characters of Childan, Frank, Juliana, Tagomi, Wegener and Joe. I found them to be well written and interesting to see their insights. I really liked Wegener's conversation with Lotze on the rocket ultimately revealing himself to be Jewish (but maybe he was joking as he's Abwehr or maybe not). I also liked the whole in universe anxiety about who succeeds Bormann. The Japanese occupation was pretty good. I loved the whole idea of the British commandos going berserk and starting to get more violent as the war was nearing the end for the Allies. I really liked it for it's alt-history and pretty good characters. It's unfortunate it's marketed as sci-fi when it's alt-history with spiritualist influences.
Rating: 3.5/5
Rounded to 4 stars
Honestly, reading a book about the historical movements in literature and how to read classic books helped me so much with The Man in the High Castle by PKD.
I didn't understand everything, but I understood and saw more than I would have. This book is filled with postmodernist musings about the self, identity, history, and more. PKD brings in many attitudes and fears that the general audience in the 1960's would have understood.
I want to read this book again in a few years. It's slow and the characters and their lives are filled with activities that didn't interest me much, but I want to see if that changes now that I understand a bit more of the historical contexts within which the book was written and what themes PKD may have been writing about.
5.0
I picked this up after watching and loving the (much longer) adaptation on Amazon Prime.
The novel met or exceeded those high expectations. As someone who watched the series first, the setting and characters felt familiar yet different, and the story was quite different, which I appreciated.
In particular, the book version of Juliana will live with me forever.
I really, really wanted to like this more. I was drawn to the premise: Germany and Japan have won WWII and the book takes place in a Japanese-controlled early 1960s America. Unfortunately there just didn't seem to be much of a plot, there were a lot of characters doing lots of meeting other characters but nothing really grabbed me. Perhaps it was that I just didn't care about any of the characters and couldn't empathise.
There were snippets of humour and admirable use of sentence structure to reflect how some Americans' speech and thought processes were influenced by their occupiers. There was also an intriguing book-within-a-book sub-plot regarding an alternative-alternative future where the Allies won but I felt it fizzled out.
Overall it's technically very good, well-written and excellently researched. Unfortunately that just wasn't enough for me. I started keen and engrossed but my initial interest waned. However, I'll definitely re-read it in a few years' time to see if I get more from it.
Wonderful (and scary) concept. The ending was definitely a twist I didn't see coming, although reading back there was definitely foreshadowing. The use of multiple narratives really made this book flow so well and allowed for a complex read.
It would've been interesting to have seen some glimpses of the direct aftermath of the war and how everything came into place. The reader gets a few peaks but just not enough.
I read this Philip K. Dick classic after watching the Amazon series that was based on it. Whew! It's a completely different experience, and reaffirms my commitment to reading the books that films and TV shows are based on.
The premise is that Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1934 and the Axis powers won World War II. Thus, what used to be the United States is divided into the Eastern two thirds which is ruled by Nazi Germany, the Pacific States which are ruled by Japan, and a buffer zone of Western non-coastal states which are a kind of free for all where agents of both super powers roam.
There are several plots underway in this dystopian world. One involves the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, Tagomi, who is drawn into hosting a secret meeting between a German official and a supposedly retired Japanese general. Tagomi is a contemplative man who consults the I Ching regularly about his decisions. He experiences a crisis in his world view, partly as a result of the situation with the German official and the Japanese general, and partly through his dealings with Robert Childan, an antiques dealer.
Robert Childan, Frank Frink a skilled metalworker, and Julianna Frink his ex-wife, all have pieces of the plot which lead them to crises in their lives, both physical and spiritual. They are all touched, to some degree, by a popular and subversive book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which shows the Allies winning World War II. The I Ching is also in wide use in this novel, even being said to have written The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.
The book ends without wrapping everything up in a bow or answering many questions. So much is left to the reader's imagination. I've read several Goodreads reviews where people were frustrated by that, but I think it is pretty effective. I am prompted to speculate about what this book means, if anything. What are the consequences or next steps for these characters? What will they value differently in their lives? In the Amazon TV show there is a fully fledged resistance movement, but there isn't one in the book. Could a Resistance arise out of the experiences of these characters and others?
Another book I would have never read if not for my book club, especially because I don't really enjoy narratives where the Nazis win. And being such an old book, I had some trouble understanding the writing style and sometimes even the vocabulary, and I feel like a lot of the meta commentary and philosophizing went way above my head. I also didn't care much for any of the characters to feel invested in.
I still thought it might have a good ending that would make it worth my effort but that conclusion just blew my mind because I did not understand a single thing about what actually happened. What the f was that???? Just makes it feel like all the time I spent reading was pointless.
If you enjoy reading older books and award winners, then this might be for you. But like me, if you are more into modern writing styles and more accessible storytelling, I wouldn't recommend picking this one.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE show on Amazon Prime made me want to check out the book on which it is based. The concept—an alternate reality where Nazi Germany and Japan won the Second World War—is incredibly fascinating and I wanted to gain further insight into this world and read the details the television show missed, as screen adaptations are wont to do.
Unfortunately, while the book started strong, giving the reader a more comprehensive view of this alternate universe, it lacked conflict and any major plot developments. Its characters—many familiar favorites from the series, such as Frank, Ed, Childan, Tagomi, Juliana and Joe—mainly wander from situation to situation, and simply exist in this world. There is no character growth, and where novels most often include a beginning, a middle and an end, this book seemed to end with events where most other books would be only half way completed.
Furthermore, the book is clearly an artifact of its time (first published in 1962), which is evident by its racist and sexist texts. Hiding behind a character who is a Nazi does not excuse gratuitous and offensive racism, and there are plenty of other ways to describe female characters that don't rely on their breasts' physical attributes (really—did we need a whole paragraph dedicated to our lead female's struggle with how to wear a new dress while lacking the correct undergarments and her worry of going without due to her “mature, size 38 bust”?)
If Phillip K. Dick (aptly named) had spent more time creating a legitimate story with actual conflict and crafting his world with detail than waxing on poetic about Juliana's beauty, bedroom antics, or breast size, we may have been gifted with a true treasure of a novel.
Instead, despite a highly disappointing series finale, I find myself amazed that the televised adaptation has more character development, conflict-driven plot, and overall is objectively superior to its source material.
The myth that the book is always better is debunked, and we have Mr. Dick to thank for that.
The world-building and setting of this story are very interesting. It follows several different points of view. I struggled to connect or care about the characters. It seemed like nothing much happened outside the world-world building.
After reading this, the only thing I'm sure of is that this is a classic, yet a strange and weird one.
Even though I thought the idea of this book, and world-building surrounding that idea, was remarkable and unique, I can't ignore the fact that I didn't really enjoy the story itself. I really, really like the TV show, so that might be an issue, as the story in the book and in the show is so much different, and I can't resist the impression that the TV show have a much better world and character-building (and the more interesting story overall).
I Finished It. Going into this book, I was thinking it would be something dramatically different based on what I had heard of the Amazon show. Instead, I got a fairly bleak look at a world where Nazi Germany won WWII, with the Big Reveal literally in the last few pages of the book. Knowing Dick is one of the legends of science fiction, I expected some actual science fiction here and all I got was alternate history. It was a good book for what it was, just wasn't what I was expecting.
The plot didn't catch me, but the world building was fascinating. Philip K. Dick's incredible imagination brings this alternate history to vivid life
Meh... Should be 2,5 stars. In the time the book came out it might have been revolutionary and daring, but the way he depicts the different peoples and the outcome of the war altogether lacks research, although the information I lack probably weren't all available to the author at the time of writing the book. But without this information it is, nowadays mere fiction and not the best at that! Especially the German spoken by German in the book is sometimes wrong.
I am so disappointed with this book. On October 1st, I was on my way out the door to work and forgot to pick a book to bring with me. My boyfriend brought me this book and I thought it would be a quick, entertaining read that would make me think.
Boy, it did make me think. I thought a lot about the climate of tensions between Japan and Germany through the USA, I thought a lot about how the people in the book regarded others in different social classes. But mostly I thought about how interesting this book could have been. The premise of the book is exactly up my street and I was so excited about it. I found the writing style difficult and boring to parse, the characters had the potential to be really intriguing but never seemed to do anything particularly interesting.
This really should be a 3* read because I respect what the book was trying to do, but I had such high hopes I dropped it a star of pure disappointment.