I do not have a good history with P. K. Dick. I never could really appreciate his writing style, I've always found it too unstable, unpredictable, as if he's making things up as he goes. But then again, last time I read a Dick's book I was still a teenager, so why not give it another try?
Well, this time it went remarkably better.
I still find his stories a little aimless, without a well defined direction, like something one writes under the influence of... something. Like when you're drunk and you try to make a conversation, but you keep jumping from one topic to another without apparent connection. But now I think that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
In this novel you never know what to expect on the next page. If in my young age I found this somehow annoying, now, with a lot more read books under my belt, being surprised is not something that happens so often, so I happily embrace anything that can surprise me. And Ubik definitely could.
There's a strange, surreal mood throughout the entire novel, that feeling that you can't decide if what you're reading is real or a fever dream by one of the characters. You often find the main character wondering something like "this may be happening because I'm dead and this is half-life, or maybe not, maybe HE's the one who's dead". It would even be funny if the overall atmosphere wasn't so damn creepy.
Because we've got all kinds of psi powers here (telepaths, precogs, reanimators, and inertials that counteract them) as well as people in half-life (people that are dead, but not really dead dead, so you can still talk to them via some kind of electronic telephone-like device. Don't ask). We've got coin-operated talking doors that won't let you out of your apartment if don't pay. We've got all kinds of crazy stuff, but if you know Dick even just a little bit, you can't expect anything less.
So, did I enjoy this book? I did. I still can't be 100% at ease with Dick's writing style, but there's a lot in this novel that makes it worth a read.