Just incredible. I’ve just completed ‘The Man in the High Castle’. Utterly mind blowing. Really not the ending I was expecting. Dramatic twists in every plot strand, but no real closure with any of the story lines. The book is left incredibly open ended and much to my surprise, the different strands do not converge in the way that I had imagined. Although, as I had predicted, further involvement of Abendsen brings to book to its pinnacle.
Writing about this with virtually no spoilers is becoming an impossible task, so skip this paragraph if you don’t want any spoilers about the end of the book. I never for a second thought my brief pondering on the book being a paradox of sorts would be correct. Juliana’s meeting of Abendsen and her questioning about his book reveals the truth that ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ was in fact written by The Oracle and when The Oracle is consulted it is revealed that the book was written because it is the truth. Mind blowingly it is essentially revealed that their existence, their reality, is fake. In a bizarre way PKD has almost revealed to his characters that they are in fact that. The ‘Inner Truth’ concludes the novel, drawing together the novel within a novel and blurring the lines of reality, for the characters (and at times almost the reader too!)
There are so many questions left unanswered. Why was Edfrank jewellery so incredible? How did it possess a pure quality of Wu? What happened to Tagomi? Where does Juliana go next? What happens to Wenger?
In some ways I feel a reflective sadness that I will never know the answers to these questions, as PKD never completed his sequel.
All in all, a joy to read, a real page turner and highly recommended to any Sci-Fi fan, or indeed anybody who enjoys contemplating a very good, at times heavy, book.
Where (or when) next?
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