And yet, a five star from me.

Is he naive and too fascinated by russia? Yes, but so are most westerners.

Can I certainly say that he read das kapital / communist manifesto? No. But then again, even those who did in the west don't have a lived experience of communism, so I empathise with them falling for barely grounded populism.

And even yet it's a great book! Perhaps the best in the series. It's weird at every corner, includes scrupulous worldbuilding and a ton of calculations. And while we may have the opposite ideas about marxism, we do share unapologetic and relentless sense of anticapitalism. Which, under western labels makes me an intersectional communist, I guess, but western labels can sod off!

Anyway, the book is FUN. The characters are WEIRD. Fforde is an amazing writer.

If you crave Douglas Adams, but ran out, and don't want to make a run to the book store, you can always rely on Fforde to deliver!