Rating: 
Summary: Dick's best novel
Review: This novel combines Dick's acute observation of middle-class postwar America, as seen in his posthumously published mainstream novels (all of which are recommended, if you can find them), along with the Big Conspiracy conceits of his many science-fiction works.Unfortunately, the publisher (and Amazon.com) ruin the gnostic construction of the novel by giving away the premise. You're supposed to be immersed in an off-kilter world, and slowly realize what's different about it. By publishing the conceit along with their summaries, the publisher and internet sites ruin the reader's thrill of discovery. (The old Berkeley paperback, for many years the only available edition, didn't give the game away, with an abstract cover, and a carefully selected blurb on the back.)
Rating: 
Summary: What a waste of time
Review: If I would have known what I was getting into, I wouldn't have read it. There are some interesting images conjured by this book, and Dick does some good characterizations, but that's it. The plotlines run helter-skelter, and there is no real conclusion, no payoff. Immensely overrated in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Not very satisfying, but it had its moments.
Review: I haven't read much of Dick, but I've heard so much about how wonderful his works are, and especially since Castle won the Hugo--I had to read it. But it was pretty disappointing, and I can't tell you exactly why. Perhaps because of some much detail that didn't really get anywhere. Not much story. Maybe I'm being to linear. Maybe you need to be into the I Ching--which I'm not, in that I don't find the oracular method of decision making very sensible. Might as well use the old 8-ball, or look up a fortune cookie. There were some real intersting moments, of course, and I was especially amused by the antique store owner who was sucking up big time to the Japanese. Perhaps I was looking for more action and plot. The only other Dick novel I've read is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I loved. Mainly the beginning, though. But that's another review. In short, I found this book to be a big disappointment. It was dull and tedious, much of the time reading like a history text. Yuk! Not my cup of tea, unfortunately (even though I have a Master's Degree in History of Religions). Oh well, I'm going to try some of his other works. I just got a copy of his last novel,
Rating: 
Summary: Very good
Review: I liked this book a lot. It was my first Dick book, and I had heard some good things about him. This definitely delivers. This book is different from alternate-WWII books, in that, it doesn't try to describe how different it is, but actually tries to discern the exact nature of alternate realities. It is very interesting, and though it concentrates on concepts, there are still the fundamental aspects of human nature, like Childan's tortured fickleness. I didn't like some parts. The prose style, with the short clipped phrases, tho7ugh conceptually brilliant (how the Japanese woould speak english), but still it got on my nerves. Also near the ending ( though brilliant) lost me a little bit. Speaking of the ending, again it's brilliant in that it shows the alternate reality starting to unravel. Reality unravels more and more, and Dick writes himself in the book as Hawthorne Abendsen. Really good....I recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Another of Dick's great conversations with "reality"
Review: This is only my third Dick book, but it's my favorite so far. Few other authors have ever given me the feeling that the characters are simultaneously fictitious and real. It's hard to explain if you haven't read it. Dick piles up ideas of weirdness that seem unusual in their normality. And not just his ideas. He uses a language that had me dipping from one character's brain into another. Great writing style.
Rating:
Summary: A great book about a phildickian today.
Review: It is a book that even non-PKD fans(or even non-sci-fi) should read.It's one of his few coherent books(along with Time Out of Joint) and it's surely a great one.Great ending,too.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy Grasshopper and fine hand wrought jewelry
Review: Philip K. Dick captures the ethos of both the Japanese and German cultures. Taking from both peoples-- their good and the bad qualities-- he creates a future that is eerily familiar. He describes the Germans as "driven by some desperate sub-conscience archetype....their egos expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off." That succinctly sums up the Nazi thirst! The psychological, religious and political insights surrounding the jewelry, expressed great insight from Dick about the nature of the conquered and the conqueror. The speculation of the U.S. being overrun by Japanese culture is not so far removed from current reality. I read this during lunch hours at the Sony Corporation surrounded by inscrutable and ambiguous Japanese; always speaking in the Mother tongue so as to obscure the directives from the Home Islands. Childen, in his relationship with Tagomi and Paul, suffered Place-consciousness and always struggled to hear the real conversation veiled beneath the spoken one. Childen experienced how very low the Rice Paper ceiling is, and while it is lighter than the American Glass variety, it is infinitely more impenetrable. Many passages in this book read like a contemporary documentary.
Rating:
Summary: A Complete "What If"
Review: There may be more exciting books using this idea -- the Allies losing WWII -- but I doubt you'll find one that's more atmospherically engrossing. The world that Dick creates is something else, especially the U.S. that's overrun with Japanese culture. Reading this book, I also realized something else: nobody writes the mind of a schizophrenic better than Dick. The passage where Tagomi is going nuts was so real that I almost couldn't read it. I still consider "Three Stigmatas of Palmer Eldritch" to be Dick's finest work, because it was so wonderfully whacked out, but I think "Man in the High Castle" is up there. It's more finely controlled than Palmer, and the landscape that Dick paints is worth looking at.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a plot driven story but powerful nonetheless.
Review: This is certainly Dick's best novel -- the ending gives you the unique feeling and "twist" that only a Philip K. Dick novel can provide. The plotting isn't much but the point is psychological, not dramatic. However, if you want to read Dick at his best buy one of the anthologies that has these two stories -- "Faith of Our Fathers" and "Frozen Journey." I promise you will never have such a unique and eerie reading experience again.
Rating:
Summary: One of Dick's greatest -- and most subtle
Review: Don't let the lower star rating above fool you -- this is one of Dick's absolute masterpieces. Most of those who have been less than fully satisfied have complained about the plot. In fact, this has one of the most amazing, intricate plots in all of fiction, where (just like real life and not at all like most fiction; it's a truly radical approach) characters have their lives profoundly changed (literally saved, in fact) by other characters whose existence they remain completely unaware of! Two main characters are ex-husband and wife, but they never even converse; they're in two of the many, separate but interweaved plot strands. They just think about each other a lot. In pace and style this is very different from later PKD books; it's not gonzo or out-of-control, it's exquisite, finely crafted, and improves with every re-reading. Dick next wrote two more tremendous books with similar plot structures and strengths, MARTIAN TIME-SLIP and DR. BLOODMONEY, before consciously deciding to increase his output rate (and probably his amphetamine consumption) in order to pay the rent. That kicked off another phase of his career, marked by sometimes sloppier writing and much wilder (and sometimes a little incoherent) plots -- THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH being the killer among these.
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