Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Dick - with religious and hallucinogenic overtones, 29 Dec 2005
This book has just be reissued as part of the SF Masterworks series, and is not among his most well-known works (such as "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep", "A Scanner Darkly","The Man in the High Castle" and "Ubik"). It was written in 1970 when Dick was undergoing a sort of religious conversion and much of the ideas expresed in the book are as a result of his relationship and discussions with Bishop James Pike.The book contains the usual Dickisms such as paranoia, hallucination, distintegration of society/environment, heroes in low-grade maintance roles and the recurring one-dimensional portraits of female characters as either selfish, controlling or oversexed. The book is far from perfect, but, as anyone who loves this author knows, that isn't the point. The point is to enjoy the warped ideas, lunacy and sheer strangeness. The plot starts off as a murder mystery (one of the lead characters is suprising offed early on) and reads a bit like a SF version of "And Then There Were None" on drugs. It does move into more usual Dick narrative territory as the story proceeds. Not wishing to give away the ending, lets just say that it has overtones of a recent SF blockbuster film. (Even films not based on his books owe a large debt to him) Enjoy another great addition to the SF Masterworks collection...!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An enjoyable read, 1 Mar 2006
A Maze of Death is quite a typical Philip K. Dick novel and is actually an OK introduction to his canon. It might not be one of his best but it is definitely written in his own unique style and is worth a look. The plot revolves around a group of strangers who are transferred from their respective home planets to a new planet to begin new lives. From here on in it is about how this group of apparent introverts get along with each other and try and work out what to do once they’ve arrived. I won’t say anymore, as anyone familiar with PKD can more or less assume nothing is what it seems. Criticisms might be that the characters are a little two-dimensional or the archaic opinion of women. Obviously I don’t think this really belongs in the Masterworks and am a bit unsure why there is so much of PKD in this series but I was glad to be introduced to it nonetheless. I wasn’t expecting great things but I was pleasantly surprised. Short and sweet!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Far from my favourite PKD book, 17 Oct 2006
I really do love more or less every PKD story I have read, and looking over my collection I have realised I have quite a bit of his work. Maze of death however is possibly my least favourite book I have read by him.
Dicks stories have always had very - as other reviewers have put it - 2 dimensional characters etc. This for me has always been a positive aspect of his novels, adding to the hollowness and meaninglesness of the realities that he spins, yet Maze of Death, whilst having all the qualities that his books usually posses (which can be veiwed as positive or negative dependant on your perspective) failed to hit the standard that his other books had set for me. This book felt too slow and didnt have enough excitement and mind shattering ideas in it, the kind that usually leave me questioning my own sanity after reading. I would suggest for a first time reader of PKD to go for something else. I would suggest the Three Stigmata, Now Wait for Last Year, Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, Time out of Joint etc. This book is good but just not as good in my opinion as his others
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by Philip K. Dick
by Philip K. Dick
by Philip K. Dick
by Philip K. Dick
by Philip K. Dick
