Yes, the book is too long. Yes, they get a lot of facts wrong. Yes, it makes no sense. But you know, it's not supposed to really make that much sense. And for the love of god, don't sit down and try to read this whole thing in one sitting. Too much truth within untruths can make you sleepy and unable to focus.

That being said, I love how the perspective changes in the beginning of this series. It drew me in. After that, it was the characters and the bizarre groups.

Is it the equivalent of a literary scam? An attempt to reproduce utter psychosis and the mind of madmen by engaging in a free writing cyclic exercise and getting it published.

Probably. Still means it's good.

Now if you excuse me, I need to hang some posters stating that due to water rationing, employees are requested to only use fifteen seconds worth of hot water. I'm going to put it under the sign "Wash hands thoroughly before returning to work." ( )

gave it the college try, just could not get into this book. Maybe I'll try again someday.

I picked this up from a used book sale attracted to the quotes calling it a hilariously funny cult scifi. I started out wondering if it would be anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide, and while it became pretty obvious fairly quickly that this novel was something different, I still found the first pages endearingly quirky.

On the other hand, after I started reading on the thing just seemed like a vessel for an endless stream of (made up, I assume?) conspiracy theories, and I wasn't able to finish. The frequent and slightly jarring skipping around reminded me of Catch-22 and the attitude of Journey to the End of the Night, only instead of slowly becoming more coherent (awesome, and funny) like the former, it just seemed to keep going on in a mess of random blabbering and prose. It reads like something some conspiracy lover punched out for word count during NaNoWriMo. And, well, I never really did like Journey. I can't even say whether or not this is a bad book, but I definitely can say it's most thoroughly not my sort. ( )

I have come across references of the Illuminatus! triology ever so often that it seemed well nigh impossible not to read the book. It has been mentioned by about anyone who knows me as a Lovecraftian or who shares my interest in conspiracy theories.
These folks also know that I happen to be one of those terrible nitpickers at times and I have been warned to take the book as it is: an IDEA of how things might have been, another take on the Illuminati.
Hence I put my doubts aside and planned to enjoy the ride, just I had done so many times ... by now, that I am halfway through the book I find it impossible to put the nagging voice of a nitpicker to silence.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy new takes on familiar stories and I absolutely love to be offered "what if" plots. It doesn't matter if I read stories like Kim Newmans "Anno Dracula" or Marc Frosts "Seven" - as long as the plot keeps me fascinated, I keep on guessing and being led astray.
I love the X Files plots that keep me wondering whether they've used "certified lore" or whether they've come up with something new and I don't mind to find myself being introduced to something that has been imagined, as long as it remains skillfully plotted.

But there is a difference between mixing fact and fiction, and getting the facts wrong because of neglect or pure disinterest.
I've been hitting the wall several times in this triology and am putting this book aside for the time being, since the obvious mistakes take the fun out of reading. Yes, I know, that I can't take every word as serious as it's been written ... But there's differences between fiction, mixing fact and fiction and mistakes.
This book offers mistakes en masse. Not just small ones - OBVIOUS mistakes that I can't just ignore.

Without revealing too much about the book, let me just offer a few hints.
Lovecraft didn't die at the age of 47, he was 46 years old. IF the book mentions that he died in 1937 one can expect that the writer(s) have been aware that someone who was born on August 20th 1890 and died at March 15th in 1937 was, indeed, only 46. Nitpicking? Nay, just the prove that simple maths and fact checking would have been needed.
Bierce and Chambers did indeed both mention Hali and Carcossa, but not "in the same year" ... not even if one takes the year of writing a story and publishing a story into account. It just doesn't sum up.
It is NOT mentioned that both authors (and other authors that would take these ideas into their prose) refer to different usages of the name, like a lake and / or a person. I find this rather confusing.
There are blatant mistakes about HPLs biography - things that are simply proven to be facts and can't be used as fiction.
Both authors use german phrases every now and then: would it have been too much to ask for some re-reading by someone who is a native speaker? Some words are spelled wrongly, some make no sense at all ... and others are translated word by word, so I had retranslate them to actually know what the guys were referring to ...
I could go on for a couple of paragraphs, but I do not wish to spoil the book for any interested reader.

If you can enjoy the story after all, you're welcome to prove me wrong. But for me, these blatant mistakes (and all these I haven't mentioned) made it impossible to thoroughly enjoy the book.
There are, as I said, certain ways to mix fact and fiction. I've enjoyed Lovecraft's approach, I like the way Stargate SG1, Star Trek, Millennium and other series have played their little mindgames with me. But this, truly, is the printed proof that you can only go so far.
For me, the journey ends with the second book.
I'm sorry guys, but I can only go this far. ( )

How to describe this book? The only adjective that comes to mind is "trippy," but that doesn't remotely capture my feelings about it. It's more like... Well, it's like taking the concentrated essence of conspiracy theory, every brand of mysticism known to man, the turbulent politics of the '60s and '70s, H.P. Lovecraft, fractured fragments of history, bad puns and bits of Philip K. Dick's brain, spiking it with LSD, spiking it with more LSD, adding Viagra, putting it all into a blender, and turning it on without the lid in place so that it makes gooey, chaotic spatters of prose all over the walls of your kitchen. Except that that sounds kind of cool and fascinating. And maybe it is in concept. But in execution? Not so much. As I was reading, part of my brain kept thinking things like "Well, in theory what the authors are doing here is very interesting" and "You have to admire their audacity," while the rest was thinking, "Oh, god, how many more pages of this do I have to get through?!" By the end of the first volume, that second reaction had more or less won, though I kept going, anyway, because I'm stubborn like that.

The thing is, I do get the sense that there's a very funny postmodernist joke at the core of this book. I just didn't feel that it was worth wading through 800 pages of gooey wall-splatterings in order to be able to say I was in on it. Ah, well. At least now when I come across references to this series, as I sometimes do, I'll be able to, well, not understand them, really, but at least recognize them. And reading this has given me a new appreciation for the game Illuminati, which I enjoyed playing back in college. Amusingly, the game really does have the exact same plot and structure as the books (in other words, none), though it's approximately 2,300 times more entertaining. ( )