Like millions of people, I linked to this book through Blade Runner, expecting a similar experience and in many ways it is, while so different in others.

The book is more complicated than the movie because of the secondary concepts explored in more depth, such as Mercerism - a type of religion.

Think of a dystopian future where Earth is no longer a viable place to live and everyone has long migrated to outer colonies and galaxies with a better quality of life. Nobody wants to live on Earth anymore.

Androids (replicants) thrive in the expanded colonies, but for practical and technical reasons have a built-in expiry date that can't be overridden, causing them to die after a set amount years.

A number of rogue androids choose to come back to earth to find the person responsible for their creation and try and extend their time-restricted lives.

This is where Rick Deckard comes in, to terminate these replicants (even though they're going to die anyway) because they're such a hazard while rogue and still alive.

The other important concepts about electric/real animals, Mercerism and a crumbling dystopian Earth aren't as important in comparison to the main plot about eliminating androids. This is the main focus of the movie.

But these concepts are important to underline the differences between human beings and androids. Humans have irrational desires for love, religion, empathy and all sorts of other emotions that androids can't fully grasp. It's a fine line between compassion and logic and the decision, by Rick Deckard, to terminate a replicant when they're practically 99% human.

Hence the title of the book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

You may ask yourself:
Do androids have human rights?
Do they dream like we do?
Will there be a future in which it's almost impossible to tell humans and machines apart?

As a cop, Rick Deckard has no immediate problems retiring androids for bonus cash. It's his job and he uses the money to get by and fuel his frivolous ego-driven purchases of real-life pets. Real animals, not electric ones, at crazy inflated prices.

In the book, replicant androids are not the formidable force they are in the movie, but capitulate when the game is up, making them rather pitiable and sad. Vulnerability and weakness are strong underlying emotions in the book, as opposed to a more direct Hollywood vision of man vs machine and who wins out. This is no Terminator.

Here, we're more focused on our reason for living and why we carry on as we do. What makes us stay put or keep on pushing? Love? Animals, pets, partners, empathy? All of that.

It's a future where people dial codes into machines to set their mood, so why bother working at anything at all, even relationships? When you want to feel good, dial in and tune out in an instant. No need for social skills. Just dials and corresponding medication.

Human beings need to stick together though.
Even though androids operate in tight-knit units, they are inexplicably detached from each other due to lack of empathy. They can relate to things, including sex and love, passion and excitement, fear and loathing, but they can't sacrifice essential individual needs for overall good in the way humans can.

This is emphasized by a religion called Mercerism, the lynchpin of understanding humanity and this book. Humans plug into a religious escalator to get their spiritual and emotional fix by pushing forward up the hill even when it becomes physically painful, by struggling forward, tired bruised and demoralized for reasons that machines can't understand. Suffering reinforces the need to remain connected and stay alive. Mercerism defines humanity over and above mech-based individualism.

There's a further concept in which domestically ownable pets can be inexpensively purchased as near-identical electronic facsimiles of the real thing due to being technology so advanced. But human ego and status doesn't want mech if just anyone can get it, it desires the real thing. If you earn enough money from retiring androids - in Deckard's case - why not buy a real sheep, goat, emu, or something else, but these animals are very expensive and almost out of reach.

It's an interesting parallel with religion and the human need to be organic and real, to feel alive, empathize and compete with each other. Including the focus on androids and the strange pitiable and sentient work of art that this book is.

PKD isn't always the most fluid author, with rough patches and indecipherable holes in places, but he is one of the most ingenious and cohesive writers at understanding humanity.

There's something so lonely, lost and detached about this book, while remaining beautifully organic and identifiable. A bleak dystopian future where machines are taking over but, for now, are necessarily kept at bay.

4 ⭐

”Whoa oh, Oh merc[erism] merc[erism] me,
Oh things ain’t what they used to be, no, no.
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the North and South and East”
- Marvin Gaye


I think we can all agree beyond reasonable doubt that my man, the sexual healer himself, Marvin Gaye, whilst putting together his 1971 album ‘What’s Going On?’ was drawing heavily from Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ (1968). It’s indisputable. Dick invokes a grim atmosphere early on in his novel. Post ‘World War Terminus’ San Francisco has been left devastated, the Earth a victim of our testosterone-fuelled obsession with Nuclear destruction. Grey Skies block out the sun (where the blue skies at?), a radioactive dust (poison wind) has descended upon the land, killing many forms of life indiscriminately. As a result, Most of Earth’s population has relocated to a new colony on Mars.


To simplify it almost criminally, this is a story about Rick Deckard, a Bounty hunter, who driven by a desire to own a real live animal (A status-symbol in post-nuclear holocaust San Fran), accepts the task of “retiring” 6 fugitive Nexus-6 model androids. There is also a secondary plot regarding a “chickenhead” (individual of low IQ) by the name of John Isidore who is attempting to aid said Androids in their attempts to elude the authorities.


Dick really just uses this plot as a backdrop for the exposition of his own philosophical musings on what it means to be human, the struggle to maintain our uniqueness in a world where technology is rendering us redundant as a species, the idea of what is real and what is artificial (on a physical and emotional level) and how our dire need for human connection causes us to blindly follow systems of faith regardless of their obvious hypocrisy. I would suspect that others who have read this book might disagree with some of these points, or in fact, pick up on entirely different themes. I really don’t think that matters. A work such as this is just vague enough in it’s questioning as to allow the reader to come to their own conclusions.


***SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT***


Interestingly, 2 major concepts of the novel were left out of the film ‘Blade Runner’ which is loosely based off this work. My guess is that the messages behind these ideas were too convoluted or complex to attempt to adapt to film. Both of these revolve around the need for humans to appear as though they have great empathy and care for living things, therefore, distinguishing them from A.I who are, supposedly, unable to display the emotion.


The first of these is the high regard in which living animals are held. To own one in this post-apocalyptic world has become a status symbol with the reason being that one is more humane for having and caring for an animal. I believe it could also be a commentary on consumerism/materialism. In the same way that many humans in our world define their worth by the value of the trivial items they own (cars, tvs, clothes, watches etc.), the people in Dick’s novel define their level of humanity with the ownership of live animals.

What’s interesting is that this ties in with another question that Dick poses. What is fake? vs. What is authentic? And if the former is so convincing as to be perceived as real, does it even matter? Aside from the obvious example of the lifelike Nexus-6 Androids, Dick plays with the same idea with regard to emotion. There is a device called a mood organ which changes the mood of the user depending on the position of its dial. Is there a difference between induced happiness and genuine happiness? In my opinion, when we set the dial to achieve a superficial “happy”, it will only ever be a temporary one. When we buy something to satiate our need for material possessions and expect it to give us genuine joy, we are only ever setting ourselves up for disappointment.


[Deckard on buying a goat]: “But I had to do it… I have to get my confidence, my faith in myself and my abilities, back.”


The second of Dick’s major concepts that weren’t to be seen in the film is the pseudo-religion, ‘Mercerism’, which promotes empathy between it’s followers through the use of an ‘empathy box which permits fusing with another member and feeling/empathising with their emotions as your own at any given time. The religion is, again, a result of the human’s fear that without the distinguishable trait of being able to feel empathy, there would be no discernible difference between themselves and the androids. As many religions do, this lends itself to an elitist mentality, leaving some people behind, namely, chicken/ant heads who are human, though supposedly, less able to show empathy.

This might be a bit of a stretch but nearing the end of the book, Deckard’s wife is very eager to use the empathy box as a means of self-gratification after they have just purchased a goat. “I want you to transmit the mood you’re in right now to everyone else”, she says. Saying it would be “immoral” to keep their happiness to themselves. In this sense, I couldn’t help drawing some parallels between Dick’s empathy box and the “Facebook” or “Instagram” of today. Deckard and his wife live a depressing life, constantly chasing happiness, and in that one moment of joy all she could think about was displaying it to the masses, portraying themselves, in much the same way as the modern-day Instagram models, as the perfect couple living a wonderfully perfect, happy life. Obviously, Dick could never have foreseen this and it’s purely, and likely non-sensical, observation on my part.


I thoroughly enjoyed my first work by Philip K. Dick. I would say my experience was only enhanced by the fact that I had previously seen the ‘Blade Runner’ film due to fact that where the book lacks in atmosphere and characterization, the film excels. Spare yourself the disappointment and don’t go into this expecting a novelization of the film. The main beats of the novel are entirely different but it’s a fantastic experience in and of itself. I’ll definitely be reading more of his work in future. Highly recommend.

If the film Blade Runner (1982) had not been so excellent I doubt this story by PKD would today be seen as a classic work of science fiction, but so it goes. Yes, DADOES rests on a great premise, e.g., what really makes people human, but the lackadaisical prose and oddities in the story (the cult of Mercer, the entire keeping animals thing) made this for me more interesting than classic.

Yes, Rick Deckard hunts androids (andys) that return to Earth; he is a bounty hunter of sorts, but never really thought of andys as alive or human. The Cult of Mercer prohibits killing life (or is it just animals and humans?) so Rick dodges this prohibition by seeing androids as simply things. Yet, the science behind androids has become so advanced it has become increasingly difficult to tell andys from humans. Over time, the various police forces on ravaged Earth devised a range of tests for andys, but each evolution of androids renders the tests more difficult if not obsolete. Currently, the tests rest on detecting whether or not the subject possesses empathy, for it seems humans do and androids still do not. Or don't they? What really makes people human? Very few movies I have seen outshine the original novel, but in this case, I will side with the movie. 3.5 androids, rounding up for GR!

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police, the year 2021 ( January 3rd), wow only a few months from now. His mission is to "retire" six androids who fled bleak Mars and illegally came to Earth (Elon Musk did y0u do this?). World War Terminus has depopulated our world, radioactive fallout called "dust" continues coming down and slowly killing the survivors, they have moved to cities. Making many of the people still living chickenheads excuse me, special. Animals are virtually extinct electronic duplicates are in great demand, real ones cost a fortune to buy but humans need their pets ... Rick has a phony sheep, his mental health requires him to get the real article, his job can make this happen. The U.N. encourages everyone to migrate to the Red Planet, giving a free robot slave for all who do (they're built there) on arrival. But Mars is uninhabitable, stark, lonely a horrible hell hole a frontier without any charm or romance, nothing to recommend settlers hate the place feel like prisoners yet the government keeps that a state secret. But the hopeful Earthlings must have a future... Mr. Deckard has not a very understanding wife and unfriendly too Iran, calls him inaccurately a cop, doesn't like her husband's job, the pay is very lucrative though he tells her. She spends most of her free time, using the Empathy Box ( the Mood Machines, keep people mostly contended) just turn the two handles and you fuse with Wilbur Mercer and his new religion of Mercerism, "Kill only the Killers ". A kindly old man forever climbing a hill, being struck down with rocks by unseen murderers. You can be hit too, when you take the trip and experience it yourselves, feel like you are really there... Mercerism has opponents led by Buster Friendly, calls the religion a fraud the enormously popular television host, in the only channel not run by the government how he works hour after hour tirelessly, broadcasting his talk show through the many hours of the day and on radio also, is a mystery... Rick has taken over the mission to eliminate the "andys'", because his predecessor Dave Holden was shot and almost terminated by the new model of robots Nexus-6, brain units almost as smart as genuine people. The original 8, are down to just 6 thanks to Holden, still in the hospital. Deckard's boss Inspector Bryant is not sure of the new man, wants him to do the almost impossible destroy all of them in one day. But first flying to Seattle and meeting the makers of these humanoids, Eldon and his niece Rachael Rosen in the Rosen Association building, needing their help and trying the Voigt- Kampff machine, to detect the human looking andys. Later the dazed, exhausted, remorseful bounty hunter thinks of sleeping with a female android, what in reality is a human being ? Back on top of the roof of his crumbling apartment complex lies his hovercar... up in the air he floats above what's left of the sad town, the city is no more, garbage everywhere kipple it's called now the world has become a gigantic dump... flying towards his uncertain destiny... A thought- provoking science- fiction tale with a message, which requires the reader to find it themselves. A classic.

4.0 stars
I enjoyed this science fiction classic. I don't always love cyberpunk novels but this one blended together other genres like dystopian and mystery, which made for a compelling narrative. I was pleased how easy this story was to follow. This is reasonably accessible for newer sci fi readers.

Rick said, "A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a benefit or a hazard very rapidly. As a benefit it's not our problem." pg. 37

I thought this was great and very original. PKD created an America after devastated by a nuclear war in 2021. The Earth has become barley inhabitable due to nuclear winter, radiation, and depopulation. Other world colonization has become the norm. Androids work on these outer colonies (like on the moon) but are outlawed on planet Earth for safety reasons. The police departments on Earth employ full-time bounty hunters to track, find, and 'retire' the androids who make their way back to Earth.

The latest android model, Nexus-6, is so lifelike it requires a bone marrow analysis to actually confirm its status. Some of the models even believe they are human because they have 'synthetic memory implants' including childhood memories, parents, etc. Androids are detected by using a fictional 'Voight-Kampff test' which measures facial response to illicit empathy—an android would not have empathy or feelings towards others in any situation.

I thought the story overall had two opposing themes: the androids are going to great lengths to live undetected and to be as human as possible. The other is our main character, Rick Deckard, who gets so caught up in his job of terminating androids, he becomes robotic and mechanical in his day to day living.

I thought this was a really cool story and I think only PKD could have written something of this style. I would recommend it to fans of his books and if you liked the 'Blade Runner' movies. The movies differ in a lot of ways but I enjoyed them as well. Thanks!

E stamani che sarà lunedì mi sveglierò e regolerò il mio modulatore di umore Penfield sullo stato d’animo del venerdì per riuscire ad affrontare con grinta e ottimismo la settimana che comincia.
La sera prima non avrò guardato le previsioni metereologiche, in verità non le avrò più guardate da mesi perché ormai da decenni la terra avrà identico clima, stillata da una costante pioggerellina di polvere che oscura tutto scendendo da un cielo perennemente privo di stelle.
Salirò sulla terrazza del palazzo che funge da parcheggio del mio aeromobile e con un volo celerissimo senza traffico arriverò sul luogo di lavoro.
Continuerò a domandarmi per tutto il giorno quale sarà la natura delle persone che incroceranno il mio cammno:
androidi malinconici e freddi che non provano empatia, in grado di pensare solo in maniera astratta,
o androidi illusi di essere umani e che non sanno di non esserlo
o umani, be sappiamo come sono gli umani…
oppure speciali cervelli di gallina, quegli umani che difettano di un lieve deficit cerebrale grazie al quale però (e questo è uno dei tanti paradossi di Dick) invece sviluppano intensi sentimenti di amore e pietà per il prossimo.

Io penserò di appartenere alla natura umana (ma come esserne veramente certa?)
Mi sarà sempre stato raccontato così ma vivendo nella realtà dickiana, quella realtà dove tutto può essere il contrario di tutto, come immersa in un sogno di un sogno avrò forti dubbi riguardo me stessa.

Quando avrò bisogno di un sostegno spirituale toccherò la maniglia di una scatola psichdelica e i miei pensieri si fonderanno in un panta-pensiero così non mi sentirò mai più totalmente sola e riuscirò a connettere la mia mente con infinite altri menti nel dolore come nella gioia.

E avrò anche io i miei momenti di tristezza, potrò placarli prendendomi cura di un animale.
Se avrò tanti soldi sarà un animale vero, uno dei pochi appartenenti a specie non ancora estinte, una pecora o un cavallo che nel catalogo Sidney hanno un valore economico elevato, sono molto richiesti e rappresentano uno status symbol fortissimo se invece mi troverò in crisi di liquidità dovrò accontentarmi di un animale elettrico una pecora o una capra o un rospo elettrico, dove sotto la pelle nuda e fredda ben nascosta e mimetizzata si apre una batteria che batte come un cuore vero.

Dovrò costantemente stare all’erta perché in ogni istante potrò essere fermata dalla polizia ad un posto di blocco stradale, per esempio, e venire sottoposta al testi di Bonelli per cui mi applicheranno una ventosa sulla guancia e mi porranno una decina di domande monitorando così i miei tempi di reazione e di risposta, un eventuale rossore ad accalorarmi il viso o un violento sbattere di palpebre o una fluttuazione di tensione dei muscoli oculari deciderà se sono femmina umana o femmina androide, nell’ultima ipotesi dovrò essere ritirata, cioè uccisa con un raggio di torcia luminosa da un cacciatore di taglie, da lì a quattro anni sarei comunque morta perché un androide è come un cellulare, progettato per vivere poco meno di un lustro.

Input a cascata promanano dalla realtà ingannevole che Philip Dick inventa, come un sogno di un sogno in un susseguirsi di azioni che potrebbero appassionare anche i più reazionari razionali amanti del genere trhiller.
Dick anticipa istanze e situazioni alcune delle quali diventate nostro quotidiano, fa sorgere nell’intreccio narrativo domande filosofiche ed etiche, la liceità della ricerca scientifica fin dove si può spingere e quali ne sono i limiti, l’illusione o la soddisfazione del conforto religioso, riflessioni sulla natura umana sui fondamenti che la rendono diversa (migliore?) da altre specie, stimoli a cascate.
Confusamente bellissimo, e anche propedeutico alla visione di Blade runner 2049, il sequel appena uscito nelle sale del mitico Blade runner.

Beklentimin çok çok üstünde bir kitaptı.. Bu kadarını kesinlikle beklemiyordum. Okuduğum ilk PKD kitabı oldu ancak kesinlikle sonuncu olmayacak.

Kitabı oldukça hızlı okudum, elimden bırakamadım diyebilirim. Her sayfayı merakla çevirdim. Hikaye ilgi çekici olduğu gibi yazarın yarattığı evren de oldukça ilgi çekici. Evren hakkında yeni bilgiler öğrenme heyecanıyla çevirdim sayfaları birçok kere..

Yazarın yeteceğine ve ustalığına hayran oldum. PKD kesinlikle bir edebiyat ustası. Bunu sadece bu kitabı okuyarak dahi söyleyebiliriz rahatlıkla. Sadece hayal gücü çok kuvvetli olan bir yazar değil aynı zamanda bir kurgu ustası. Okuru nasıl heyecanlandıracağını ve kitabı okuyanı nasıl zinde tutacağını çok iyi biliyor..

Yazar olmak isteyenler için ders niteliğinde bir eser. Bu kitabın yetenek ve çok çalışmanın bir ürünü olduğunu rahatlıkla söyleyebilirim.

Kitabın yazıldığı günden bu yana 53 yıl geçmiş. Tam 53 koca yıl. Bu kadar teknolojik gelişmenin olduğu, hayatın ve teknolojinin hiç olmadığını kadar hızlı değiştiği 53 yıl. Buna rağmen kitap halen aktüelliğini koruyor. Hiç ama hiç eskimiş hissettirmiyor.

20 yıl önceki yazılmış birçok bilimkurgu kitabı dahi eskimiş hissetirken üzerinden yarım asır geçmesine rağmen çarpıcılığını ve güncelliğini koruyan böyle bir eser ortaya koymak ustalık değilde nedir?

En önemli bilimkurgu klasiklerinden birisi ve en önemli cyberpunk klasiği bence.

Yazar kitap içerisinde birçok kez gerçek-sahte, doğru-yanlış, bilinç gibi kavramları sorguluyor. Hayatın ne olduğu üzerine okur ile birlikte düşünüyor. Eserin bu kadar güçlü olmasının sebeplerinden birisi de bu düşünsel yönünün çok güçlü olması..

This classic sci-fi story, written in 1968, is what the movie “Blade Runner” is very, very loosely based on. I think this audio edition I had was used to sucker movie fans into the book.

It’s 2021 and the world is dealing with the aftermath of radioactive fallout after the last world war. Nearly all animal life is extinct, so any living creature is highly valued. Android versions of animals and humans are easily manufactured, though.

Rick is a bounty hunter of rogue androids. All he wants is a real animal. The story at its core explores the concept of what counts as “real” vs. “artificial.” Is killing androids murder? Can electric animals be loved as much as real ones? This theme shows up on multiple levels.

The book is written in that sort of dry style of the 1960s. If you’re comfortable with Dune or Ray Bradbury, this will be fine for you. Some parts were a little slow, but some parts were really good. It’s not really an action thriller but is supposed to make you think.

It's hard to tell, now, what position this book might have assumed in Dick's oeuvre without the influence of Ridley Scott's film adaptation. It would surely have been less famous, and perhaps it would even have been thought of as a minor work; but I don't think so. In any case, the brilliance of Blade Runner resides less in its plot and more in Scott's meticulous production values – the sets, the backgrounds, the atmosphere that still feels absolutely real, even as the film's pacing and characterisation start slowly to date. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the interest comes from somewhere else altogether.

It is 1992, on the American West Coast some time after a cataclysmic world war. Toxic pollution has meant that most people have left Earth for off-world colonies, and those who are left eke out a bleak existence in a kind of blighted urban wasteland made up of empty buildings and weird corporate entities. Our protagonist, Rick Deckard, works as a bounty hunter who ‘retires’ escaped androids, which have become so advanced that they are virtually indistinguishable from humans – differing only, perhaps, in their apparent lack of a single specific emotion: empathy.

Two of the most interesting aspects of the book are not really in the film at all. The first is the status of animals, which have become vanishingly rare, changing hands for astronomical sums of money. To own an animal is a huge status symbol, which the less-well-off substitute with robotic versions: Deckard himself has a fake sheep. The running subplot about whether he will ever possess a real animal of his own is one of the most unexpectedly touching parts of the book. The other curiosity is the religion of Mercerism, by which the downtrodden across the world(s) link minds to take part in watching an old man endlessly complete a Sisiphean journey uphill while being pelted with rocks. Well, it makes about as much sense as any other religious dogma, I suppose….

Both of these angles feed into the book's main theme, which has to do with empathy and the nature of being human. Reading this as I did in a big three-volume set of Dick's novels, it seemed to mark a natural progression from his earlier books – having undermined the reality of history in The Man in the High Castle, and of subjective experience in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, it feels natural that he now turns his destabilising gaze to human nature. That's partly an illusion, though. Dick was pumping out pulp fiction like a machine, and this wasn't really his third novel but something like his twenty-ninth.

Still, it obviously has many connections with the themes he was interested in, and he hones in with remarkable focus on the essentially revolutionary nature of empathy as a human trait – a faculty that ‘blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated’. As with a lot of his ideas, the weirdness, when you take a closer look, turns out to be surprisingly political.

Wow! What a trip! It's almost unimaginable that this futuristic book was written in 1968. Despite the entire novel revolving around androids and other mechanical creatures, this thing is dripping with life. I got completely lost in this barren and terrifying world. While there was more than plenty of action, there was a lot of open ended questions. These dealt with mortality and morality. I want to see the classic film and revisit this gem in the future. Definitely check it out if you're a sci-fi fan.

I'm going to chalk this one up to loving it more as a full-grown man versus enjoying it as a kid fresh out of college, but this book became a BETTER book for me on the second read.

It happens. Sometimes it happens all the time. And perhaps I just upgraded my memory from the Nexus 6 to the new and improved Nexus 7 of this particular text. And maybe I just fell in love with some of the underappreciated aspects buried deep inside the novel.


*A slight spoiler alert*

I mean, it's super old and most of us have poured over all the details already, so how MUCH of a spoiler this could be is beyond me, but let's just move on. :)

From before, I was more interested in the empathy box and the hidden gems of worldbuilding such as the purpose of the androids and the mystery of JUST WHO IS LEFT ON EARTH? I'm sure most of you have seen Blade Runner and a lot of you have wondered if Deckard was an android and perhaps wondered if the war, far more than killing off most animal life, also killed off most of humanity. All that's left might have been Androids. It's really hard to tell, after all. Flesh and blood. Empathy differences. The inability to renew themselves. Mostly, it's a paranoid fantasy, but not quite as paranoid as some of PKD's works.

But now? What interested me the most? Mercer. The religion of respecting life and the hypocrisy of all the remaining people. Keeping fake pets and revering the few real ones as being the highest form of holiness on this benighted planet. Or when Deckard met Mercer on the stairs and fused with him, going a bit crazy in the process. Was this an expression of his own total disillusionment with his job and the insanity of killing andy when they are almost EXACTLY like us? Or that, as many people have wondered since Blade Runner came out, Deckard was actually a Nexus 6? That his lack of empathy or the growing empathy in the line intersected so much that there was literally no difference anymore?

Ah, well. My interest is a little deeper.

Mercer itself seems suspiciously like VALIS. There's a LOT of carryover between all of PKD's books, easily shown through his Exegesis, and this particular novel actually does an awesome job giving us the Empire that Never Ended, the Black Iron Prison, and the sense of the ineffable and the hope for so much more.

I kinda missed that the first time. I guess everything truly does get a bit better as you read more and more of the author. :) This novel is a counterpoint or a repeated theme, yes, but it's a darkly vibrant one with a very different flavor from the rest. :)

A hearty five stars.