The structure of the book is that each chapter tells a small story without much plot. We meet a person or a place in each chapter and may have mention of them later, but you never really get a character to care about. If I wasn't reading it for group, it would have gotten The Eight Deadly Words.
Most of the chapters are about people on a planet that has had some kind of apocalypse and the society is strongly feudal. The people at the top of the planet's hierarchy are the hair carpet makers. Each man takes a lifetime to knot a hair carpet from the hair of his wives and daughters. If more than one son is born, the newer one dies (usually) because the income from the father's carpet will support only one son who then makes a carpet from his wives' and daughter's hair.
Everybody on the planet believes that the carpets are bought by the God-Emperor and used in his palace. People who question anything are killed. Everybody has a subsistence-level living. So into this, comes a scout ship -- the Emperor (who was not God) has been killed and the rebels have won -- and one of the soldiers landed. He goes missing quickly. Even shown pictures, the people don't believe that the Emperor is dead (after all, he's God) and they kill the people who speak heresy.
There's a lot of working up to why the Emperor died and how, and where the carpets go, and the book ends in a way that reminded me of "The Gifts of the Magi." You could read the first chapter and then the last two and get the entire plot. It would have made a nice short story. But what about all you learn about the people in the story-chapters? Well, I think a good author could have put that in a short story.
Before the stroke, I liked deep sociological and political plots, but when my brain rewired, it wired me to like stories where things happen. Nothing happens in this book.
