The Simulacra

I normally enjoy the twists and postmodern surprises in PKD, but this latest foray into his material left me wanting more.  The side plots seemed irrelevant, and the ending was too conventional compared to his other work.  It has its moments.  But when I think of some of the characters like Ian Duncan, his purpose did not drive the plot, but added dimension to the world, which wasn't really needed.  For a book just above 200 pages one would expect less sideplots and less characters than PKD managed to cram into his story.

Though I will say I enjoyed Richard Kongrosian who imagined he had lethal body odor and was contagious.  At another point he thought he was invisible and was amazed when people saw him.  And near the end his body started turning inside out and absorbing random objects.  He lungs replaced a gun in someone's hands, which that person dropped causing Kongrosian to complain that dropping his lung was unkind.  So the staple diet of bizarre is still here.  I will admit that I enjoyed it, though it seemed the plot was not as tight as other PKD novels.