Brilliant

Would you try another book written by Philip K. Dick or narrated by Jeff Cummings?

Another great story from PKD. The narrator is excellent too.

Would you be willing to try another book from Philip K. Dick? Why or why not?

Yes

Which scene did you most enjoy?

Hard to choose.

If this book were a film would you go see it?

Yes

Any additional comments?

I would recommend

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2 people found this helpful

actually not a good book! well performed though

Generally well performed although the voice of Juliana is a little amusing. The book itself is actually not good. The Prime TV show is far superior.

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Great!

Awesome story, but slow to get going.. And if you can ignore the casual racism and the weird alternative history, your in for a treat!

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3 people found this helpful

Better read than a listen

I read this when I was a kid and loved it. It's harder to follow when listening, but still very enjoyable. The reader was eloquent but unconvincing with accents and I found he really struggled with female voicing (for Juliana). Still, I would recommend this to anyone. Just don't be doing anything else while you're listening or you'll lose the thread and have to go back.

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1 person found this helpful

Disappointing after the tv

I thought this would be gripping but , compared to the TV programme of the same name, its limited.

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Just average all over I think.

Very predictable twist at the end with no real meat to it. mildly entertaining but not really satisfying all told. voice acting ok, but Juliana sounded like Sharon Marsh from Southpark which was rather off putting.

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Watch the TV series first...

If you are intrigued by the premises then maybe start with the TV series first. The book goes into more detail about the world which is both interesting and frightening butis otherwise a very slow moving piece of fiction where characters seem to ponder about everything page after page after page. Not much actually happens and a political power struggle that could mean the start of 3rd World War, and would have been a great plot driver, is only briefly alluded to and then fizzles out to make room for more pocket size philosophy. Even some of the characters are downright annoying, with Juliana taking top place she comes across as gullible, naive and is too much of a bimbo which is not helped by the narrators performance of her. So no, best start with the TV series.

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Not much in common with the TV series…

If you hope this book will answer some questions left open after the Amazon Prime TV series you will be disappointed. Not much in common between the book and the show. Many most interesting characters from the show are nowhere to be seen, other are completely different (and not to the better). Well, even the main story is about something else.
It is not so often when adaptation is a couple of levels above the book. This is one of these rare cases…

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If you've seen the Amazon version, read this also

'The Man In The High Castle' is probably Philip K. Dick's second best-known novel (after 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', which inspired Blade Runner), and the inspiration of a lusciously-produced Amazon series, just about to go into its second season.

As with much of Dick's work, the premise is better than the execution: the Axis has won WWII and has divided up the United States, the Japanese occupying everything west of the Rockies, the Nazis the East Coast and most of the Midwest, with a notionally neutral buffer zone in between.

The novel is very different to the TV series, which takes the book as inspiration rather than following the rambling, ultimately unsatisfying plot and deals much better with character than does the book.

This audiobook, then, acts as an interesting companion volume to the TV series, or a quirky solo 'read'. The focus of the book is much less on the characters, and much more on the Chinese philosophy which links them all (Taoism), which adds dimension to what might otherwise be a rich but essentially political drama. As with every Dick novel, it loses energy, cohesion and sense as it moves towards anti-climax, so don't expect a big payoff.

Narration is decent, though female characters all sound alike and rather breathy and insubstantial (having said that, female characters rarely figure greatly in Dick's novels, so there is nothing much lost).

Not a bad buy, and if you've seen the Amazon series, definitely worth it. If you haven't seen the Amazon series, get yourself a Firestick now!!!

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28 people found this helpful

Not all women are stupid

Enjoying the story but the narrator reads all female characters like they're ditzes, even though they're not written that way. It's irritating and jars with the intelligent ideas the female characters often express.

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14 people found this helpful