[mcaruso]

> How long did it take?

About a year (~2000 kanji). That's casual study though, and I restarted once after an idle period.

> How well can you read?

I can recognize and write just about any of the general use characters. But kanji is not vocabulary. Instead, going through RTK has made studying vocabulary tremendously easier. It's given each character a kind of "identity" in my head. I can also guess the meaning of many compounds by the keywords given in the book, but this is just a bonus, real reading comprehension should be attained with vocab study.

I'm not sure if you've actually read the book, but it's no snake oil. It makes no claims to the amount of time or effort you'll need to finish it. It's simply a method to learning kanji that tries to make the most out of your memorization capabilities. It does this by presenting them in a more convenient order (progressively building up the characters), and throwing etymology (to some extent) out of the window in favor of your own personal mnemonic stories.

[mattm]

> I'm not sure if you've actually read the book, but it's no snake oil.

I would not be surprised if the parent hasn't read the book or tried it. Most of the complaints with his method seem to come from people who have never tried it.