Ji FU reviewed The Golden Apple by Robert Anton Wilson (Illuminatus Trilogy, #2)
It's like reading an LSD trip.
3 stars
There is 0 break in the story, for whatever story there is, between The Golden Apple and Part 1 The Eye in The Pyramid. I guess that's one reason why since at least the 90s Illuminatus! has only been printed as one single volume containing the whole trilogy.
There is not much I can say about this that I didn't already say in 2022 when I reviewed The eye in the pyramid: The writing style is out there; the character who makes up the first person prose changes with no more than a single paragraph break; I feel it is like what reading an LSD trip would be like. Part of me wondered what it would be like to read while on drugs, but I was not going to start doing drugs just to find out.
Without the description of the black mass, it wasn't quite …
There is 0 break in the story, for whatever story there is, between The Golden Apple and Part 1 The Eye in The Pyramid. I guess that's one reason why since at least the 90s Illuminatus! has only been printed as one single volume containing the whole trilogy.
There is not much I can say about this that I didn't already say in 2022 when I reviewed The eye in the pyramid: The writing style is out there; the character who makes up the first person prose changes with no more than a single paragraph break; I feel it is like what reading an LSD trip would be like. Part of me wondered what it would be like to read while on drugs, but I was not going to start doing drugs just to find out.
Without the description of the black mass, it wasn't quite as offensive as the first. Personally, I could not have read all three books one after the other. My brain just needs time to heal from all this.
In many places, including on the cover itself, this book is classified as Science Fiction, but it's not science fiction at all in any way. Not like a "But Star Wars isn't Science Fiction, it's a Space Opera" way but there is nothing in the plot related to changes or questions about science. I mean sure there is a submarine on the cover, and there is like one scene that take place aboard the submarine "Leif Erickson" but that's it.
I'll finish the Trilogy, but it will probably be another 3 years before I do.