Rating: 
Summary: I bought it just for the cover...
Review: ...but it turned out I loved the words inside just as much. Robert Anton Wilson tells one hell of a shaggy-dog story in this book and in the Illuminatus! Trilogy (not to mention the rest of the Illuminati-centric stories).If you like conspiracy theories, drug humor, the occasional naughty bits, and convoluted alternate-realities, you'll adore this book to pieces. I had to buy a second copy because my first copy was lent out and never came back.
Rating:
Summary: I bought it just for the cover...
Review: ...but it turned out I loved the words inside just as much. Robert Anton Wilson tells one hell of a shaggy-dog story in this book and in the Illuminatus! Trilogy (not to mention the rest of the Illuminati-centric stories). If you like conspiracy theories, drug humor, the occasional naughty bits, and convoluted alternate-realities, you'll adore this book to pieces. I had to buy a second copy because my first copy was lent out and never came back.
Rating:
Summary: one of a dozen books that can actually reprogram your mind
Review: a book that made me LAUGH outloud, every other page... a book that delighted and astonished me... a book that is so incredibly clever... that I am in constant awe at the slippery, quantum-jumping, amazingly connected mind that created it... I've only read it 4 times... but I keep making the mistake of loaning it to others ... passing on the mindbending material... only to find that they will not part with it... forcing me to buy another.. and mark IT all up with my highlighter!
Rating:
Summary: One of RAW's best books to date, a cant put me down
Review: A messed up trip through aworld that is so alike to our own, its scarry. If you have read any of his other works, i think you will agree that this one is the best of the best.
Rating:
Summary: schrödinger's cat = Illuminati Pt. 2
Review: AFter reading "THe Illuminati Trilogy," maybe you'll be ready for the schrödinger's cat trilogy, but probably not. This is better than the IT, and that in itself is a miracle. When the world goes mad, this is all that will make sense.
Rating:
Summary: Very good!
Review: Although Schrodinger's Cat was -very- good, it wasn't quite as stimulating as Illuminatus!. Still, I DEFINITELY recommend this book! Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! Kallisti! Temperance VII in A.'. .'.. Member of Lady Velkor's Coven, God's Lightning Destroyer~ ~Lilith Velkor
Rating: 
Summary: It's not the Illuminatus
Review: As far as the greatest work of the 20'th century goes, this is its sequal. Sometimes funny, sometimes deep, this book isn't the free drugs that its namesake is. In a lot of ways, it's a rehash of the old material. As an independent work goes, fine. lovely. I had three head trips and 30 minutes of afterburn from it. If it were from any author that didn't have to live up to their haunting past, it would be marvalous. But anyone who has read the original just won't be as enthralled. And anyone who hasn't read the original, should. If that doesn't bother you, Hail Eris!
Rating: 
Summary: Marginally psychotic balderdash?
Review: At the risk of sounding like a literary philistine, I must say that I didn't get it. There was some really neat stuff, but it rambled on and on and I didn't catch the connections. Is this one of those works where you need to be warmed up on some good acid, or maybe a devotee of obscure occultist literature? Maybe my problem is that I've been clean and sober over ten years, or maybe because I have a Ph.D. in psychology. I don't know. I plan to read Illuminatus and see if I can make sense of that one. I think I gave it a good run for the money--I read the entire first part basically in one sitting while waiting for my wife to shop for clothes, partly in a Starbuck's coffee shop and partly on a sunny patio outside a Middle Eastern deli during an unseasonably warm day in January, in Austin, Texas. I usually make marginal notes in the books I read, and in this one all I could find, scribbled inside the front cover, was: Marginally psychotic balderdash?
Rating:
Summary: personal best stonedness-rate reached by consuming "The Cat"
Review: climb up to climax of RAW's "Cat". reach the highest wave to be surfed. owl says; play your own Tom & Jerry-game.
Rating:
Summary: An extreme disappointment
Review: Here's where all the charges leveled against Robert Anton Wilson turn out to be utterly true. This book is confusing, stupid, pretentious, self-indulgent and not that funny. Mostly its a book about alternative universes where the characters change their jobs, sexual orientations and outlooks depending on what world they happen to inhabit. There is no plot, merely an amalgamation of scenes that illustrate everything that Wilson believes. This works in some books, but this book isn't one of them. The problems are numerous. You don't like any of the main characters. If they are from the original trilogy their personalities have been sucked out. The humor isn't all that humorous and most of it is just rehashing of the original. This seems to have been written shortly after the original trilogy without Robert Shea. It seems that Shea and Wilson had an argument over the original work with Shea yelling that they needed plot and structure and Wilson arguing for disjointed scenes. If that is true then Wilson won the argument with this book and the reader loses. Later Wilson work is really good after he's learned to control the manic energy inhabiting his writing. This book is an example of what happens when someone is allowed to run rampant with the ideas and doesn't bother putting them into any structure. Like a 3-year old with a box of crayons - all color, no substance. Besides that ths book is kind of boring. For all the reasons cited and more. Read the original Illuminatus Trilogy and then read Masks of the Illuminatus. Even if you want the manic stream of conscious writing you'll like it better with Masks or Historical Illuminatus 3 if you can find a copy.
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