The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Its a dreadfully long monster of a bookThe authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. The time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell. I'm sure the authors - whom I have never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposinga real conspiracy. "Well, I hope the authors don't mind my repeating their words. I found it a bit like I do Shakespear. I am sure there is a joke or a political dig in there, but I am just not sufficiently familiar with the necessary context to quite get much of it, and feel a lot is going right over my head.I read it quite quickly, which probably says something good about it, but whether I enjoyed it ? I am really not sure. Perhaps I need to read it again. Perhaps you need chemical assistance, or perhaps you need a schoolboy sense of humour, and I am just too old.It is without doubt a monster of a shaggy dog story.Hail Eris !

There is a reason why mainstream success mostly eluded this pretty big trilogy.Firstly I was reading this for the mysticism and insight into secret brotherhoods - and have to say the research done by the authors is clearly extensive and insightful, however historical fact is marbled in with invented history, fantasy and altered timelines, which you have to pick through.Makes a device of modernist stream of consciousness flip flopping at breakneck speed and for it's time was clearly trying to be as edgy as possible. You're talking Ralph Bakshis' "Fritz the Cat" levels of 70s (incredibly awkward) sex and drugs and "I just said up yours baby" blacksploitation dialogue with Crowleyanity thrown in to boot.The end result is really that the plot is hard to follow at times and swaps out intrigue and plot development for weirdness. Discordianism comes across as hard to like and the levels of introspection among the main characters as they have another weird ultra violence sex and supernatural future tech encounter is wearying. It's not bad but I haven't found it an enjoyable read after the first 100 pages or so and am kind of stuck in the middle of the book.This is the originator of a lot of pop culture tropes and you probably should read it but it may not be enjoyable."Just then a giant woman stuffed into an apple tried to make love to the redneck hillbilly on ketamine and the dolphin flew the c++ missile into the moon as the big bopper used the mind ray from his recording studio to tell Mungo Jerry that this was one hell of a trip, as Adam weishaupt called a meeting..." it's like that.

The longest, strangest and most difficult novel I've ever read...yet really enjoyable. Comes with a free speedboat. Intentionally chaotic, the book draws you in with a mixture of facts and fiction (as favoured by the Discordians), covering nearly every conspiracy theory imaginable. I'm sure there's much more fnord going on than I could keep track of, but I learned to embrace the confusion and carry on. Handy 1:1 scale, perfectly sized for human hands.

I was intrigued that a book written so long ago , fiction or otherwise dealt with the illuminati, so thought i'd give it a try.I've read a lot of offbeat books.While in places this was funny, intriguing~ overall this one was a bit too weird even for mysometimes oddball tastes &rather more gratuitous sex than was strictly needed.Though slightly too young to remember the sixties i'm old enough & (just about!) educated enough to have a reasonable grasp on 20th century history.( with an emphasis on American 20th century history in this books case.)I think if you were a somewhat younger reader,most likely a lot of the book would be completely lost on you.I wanted to like this book, but overall don't care for it that much.

I am reading this for the second time, and bought it for the Kindle because the paperback is so fat it was making my wrist and thumb ache. The Kindle version is very well presented. The first 300 pages are the most difficult, but it is worth plodding on. It is also worth looking up a lot of the references to other events - I was very surprised by what I read about John Dillinger, for example. I suspect that this is one of the best books ever written. It owes something to James Joyce, but has more depth of relevant meaning. Just try it. Look it up on the Web first, to get some signposts for understanding. Above all, have fun. Lots of it.

A clever, iconic book, possibly too clever for its own good. I lived through the sixties and am still missing some of the jokes. Just take it the good humour that was intended and don't worry about who really does rule the world.

I want to like it, but it's just a bit all other the place and I am finding it hard to keep up with the various story lines. I understand people saying they enjoyed re-reading it, because I think you probably have to! Unfortunately I don't have the time to invest in re-reading trilogies, lots of other books on the shelf to get through

Not an easy read but a book full of all sorts of good things and the forerunner of all conspiracy theory fiction. Anything by Robert Anton Wilson is full of references both obvious and obscure, this book is no exception, finding them is half the fun of reading it.