This is a strange book that I picked up at a local bookshop closing sale, as I'd been wanting for a while to read something by Zizek, who is a contemporary philosopher who has a controversial reputation.
The first half to two thirds of the book go to some length to discuss the metaphysics and cosmology of Shelling, which is a form of dialectical materialism similar to Hegel's (indeed, Schelling was a room-mate of Hegel's at univeristy, and life long friend, whose early work Hegel built on to a large degree). Schelling has admittedly been rather ignored compared to Kant, Hegel and Schopenheur, and if this book is anything to go by, this is quite unsurprising, depsite Zizek's enthusiam for him.

The main motif of the first part of the book is Schelling's cosmology, which I will summarise: God, first, was a contractive power (B). He was in this state in the "eternal past", in an "antaganostic rotary motion of contracted matter". After this, at some point he speaks "the Word which will resolve this unbearable tension", begetting his son. In this expansive motion of light (A), order is produced out of chaos. This production of the finite A out of the infinite B is then analogised to The Fall and establishment of good and evil, and various other things including several psychoanalytic and sociological principles. There are various logical inconsistencies with the details of Shelling's system, which aren't worth going into here, but which concern necessary truths and the greek concept of logos. Though there is much in common with Hegel's dialectical materialism, Zizek's treatment of it certainly didn't make it seem any less mystical/metaphysical (in a bad way). This would all be less of a problem if it concerned only part of the first chapter, but this strange thinking and cosmogeny is a major theme that runs throughout the book, no-where corrected by Zizek and instead taken seriously and synthesised with various items of Hegelian and pyschoanalytic thought.
Another major motif of the book is Lacan's three categories of existence: The Imaginary, The Symbolic, and The Real, which Zizek makes no attempt to explain. If the reader is familiar with Lacan's usage of these and other terms then it might be worthwhile reading, but not otherwise.
Some of the writing is also so opaque that it suggests that Zizek was not only inspired by Hegel in the content of his thought, but also in his manner of obfuscating his contradictions and inconsistencies with jargon and imprecision.
But this is perhaps to ignore the interesting parts of the book, some of which are very readable, thought provoking, and display some acuity of perception. One of Zizek's peculiar trademarks is his use of of popular culture in analogies to explain philosophical or sociological concepts. Among those deployed here are "The Flintstones", the great film "Casablanca", and the tense thriller on the bus "Speed". When Zizek isn't writing Hegelian nonsense, he can actually be amusing and quite clever.
I really can't recommend this book, but I want to like it for the few good bits in there. It might be worth coming back to after reading the primary texts by Schelling and Lacan, but this is still doubtful, ( )