Book Review: Dr. Bloodmoney (Or, How We Got Along After the Bomb) (Philip K Dick)

"It's death, he thought.  Death lighting up spots, burning up the world's life, second by second.  He continued to watch." - Philip K Dick

A post-apocalypse PKD novel? Sounds great, right? The man had previously staggered my imagination with the bleak futuristic cityscapes in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (although my memory of that might be biased from my love of its film adaptation, Blade Runner).  This earlier novel taps into some of the same oddities that populate other PKD novels:  Dr. Bloodmoney is a bizarre world full of mutants, telepathy, telekenesis, and surreal dreams, all set in a post-nuclear-war environment.

Frankly, I found Dr. Bloodmoney to be a rather dry read.  Even though something about Androids and Ubik managed to keep me engaged, I found this book to meander a lot, seeming to lack a coherent direction or central conflict, causing me to lose interest often.  Things did get interesting in parts, especially regarding the phocomelus and homunculus characters, but otherwise the book felt like a bit of a chore.

As mentioned above, I felt the plot for this book was rather weak.  It is full of interesting characters, each with their own distinct voices, personalities, and issues, but the sequence of events felt rather random to me.  With the concepts the book deals with, the whole thing comes off as weird.  Given that this is a story about a community and some supernatural elements, this almost felt like something Stephen King would have written.

However, the writing is pretty solid.  It is all well-written, dialogue is great, descriptions are okay, and the book is generally good without being overly wordy.

Overall, it's not a bad book at all, I just wish it had a clearer story.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Average | Story:  Average | Book:  Pretty Good)