Well-written, well-paced novel, looking at how power corrupts, carves up society and is destroyed. This is a book with a brutal, elegiac quality, as the action shifts from the personal all the way up to the intergalactic, with vulnerable characters apparently doing whatever they can to ‘get by’, whether its regrooving tyres, printing tonnes of elicit political literature or fretting about personal appearance and hygiene. There’s plenty of commentary and satire too, although the sadness of the book takes a little energy out of the narrative. But still, a great way into Phillip K Dick.