Ubik

In a way I'm conflicted about this book.

PKD is one of my all-time favorites and I've always enjoyed his work, but I feel like there is a wide range of PKD books that can at times feel very different. But at their core, most PKD books share the same basic truths; the first portion of the book is where he establishes an interesting world, characters and sets rules. The third and final portion is where all of those rules are broken, sometimes incrementally until they've been shattered.

Sure, that doesn't account for 100% of his books, but for a large portion of them it works. For Ubik it is dead on. The problem with Ubik is that the entire second act is just kind of there. It makes sense that it is like that because there is a mystery unraveling in Ubik and the characters need to exist within the confined set of rules that have been established for this world. The problem is that the stuff that happens in there isn't that interesting.

There are definitely moments that are captivating, but by-and-large I found myself putting this book down a lot, which considering it being a rather quick read, is kind of a bummer. The beginning established such an interesting world and characters, as PKD is prone to doing, but then watching some of them lament around it wasn't nearly as fun as it seemed it would be.

That being said, the four stars is because that beginning was just so strong and the last third was enough to wash the dull middle section away almost completely. Dick likes to play with perception and concepts of isolation, alienation and existence in general. Ubik is no different in this regard and wraps itself up in the exact fashion that you'd want from Philip K. Dick.