and while some of the details were very interesting, I seem to recall the story falling apart by the end.

I also recall that it was the PKD entry on Larry McCaffery’s Top 100 novels list, where he said that it was the closest Dick came to writing a “masterpiece,” though he never actually wrote one, and that it was the subtle treatment of Asian themes that made it stick out. I’d rank it towards the bottom of my own list, with Ubik, Electric Sheep and Scanner Darkly at the top.