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I was recommended this book as something I might enjoy, and the premise seemed very interesting, so I picked it up gladly and with excitement.

I very quickly realized this is not what I expected, and as the book went on it became more and more obvious it's not for me.

The world building is whimsical, inconsequent and tongue in cheek. The world is basically our own, with a few twists, like for example that people are much more worked up about literature than in our world, for no apparent reason. There's several cults about the authorship of Shakespear's works, for example.

This is a work of literature wherein literature is inexplicably very important to people, and whose main premise revolves around one of the classics; it's just so self-indulgent.

The characters are walking collections of clichés. The villain, especially, is a caricature, perhaps trying to evoke one dimensional villains from old works of literature, and ending up with a hollow shell that feels more like plot device than person.

And the names. Ah, the names. I expect they are supposed to be funny, in a sensible chuckle sort of way, but they did not land with me. There's a character whose name is Jack Schitt, who, you guessed it, is an antagonist. There's a LiteraTec (ie literature police) whose name is Paige Turner. And so on.

Moreover, the book is full of tropes. I seriously have not had such frequent use for TVTropes.org ever before while reading a book. There's examples of:

- Two (!) counts of Stable time loop
- Forgotten phlebotinum (time travel, which seems to be rampant but not used to, for example, solve the question of the authorship of Shakespear's works which is seemingly plaguing the world, until the protagonist suggests it out of the blue at the end of the book)
- Homemade inventions
- Deus Ex Machina

And that's about as many as I have patience to list (mostly because they were the most annoying).

Finally, I understand that the author did not set out to write a serious book and accidentally made it comical: it's meant to be comical. It just did not amuse me at all. If the above sounds like something you could enjoy, by all means, pick the book up as a lighthearted romp full of capers and throwaway literary jokes. For me, though, this is both the first and the last book I ever read in this series.

Oof. Can I simultaneously feel this was masterfully executed and disgusting at the same time?

Interestingly, I read the second book when I was a teenager and found it too grimy for my tastes. So I picked it up again now, to determine whether it was my immaturity that made me dislike it.

It was not.

The ultra-violent world that is described, with disgustingly and inexplicably violent characters throughout feels to me to be simply a justification for the macho vigilatism of all the protagonists (the Batman, Gordon, the new Robin).

The fact that the story just reiterates how right that conclusion is by having the next, young, idealistic police commissioner change her mind on that macho vigilantism within a few days of taking the post, is just the writer patting himself on the back. "Look how right I am, even she agrees with me". Yeah, well said, also shut up.

Pretty good idea, pretty terrible ideas, nice art. Now piss off.

I've wanted for a while to read more about the Russian revolution, but the task of research and reading one or more history books whose leanings I'd have to scrutinize without much historical knowledge myself (seeing how doggedly anything that has to do with the USSR is reviled in western discourse), was daunting.

Enter China Miéville, himself a socialist, and perhaps my favourite author, who seems to have done the research and retold the whole thing in his style, with as much historical accuracy as possible.

Exactly what I needed.

And the book delivered on its promise beautifully: I now feel I have an understanding of the Russian revolution(s), what they were about, how it all went, and how it was to live through them as a revolutionary.

What I loved, which is very in style for China Miéville, was how he managed to vividly bring to life moments that were tense, intense, but also entertaining. For example, when Lenin was hiding, disguised, in Finland, and a soldier from a unit looking for him in secret, was forced to seek refuge in his isolated cabin, told him that he was looking for Lenin, without recognizing him.

I generally never rate non-fiction books, but this one straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction, and ends up being both, and very well written on top of that. So it gets a rating.

This was an important book for me, because it moved me away from thinking of the situation in Venezuela only in terms of its government: it talks about how Chavez did not materialize in thin air, but was fostered in a rich communal organizing culture, that is alive in Venezuela even today, and that even though Chavez tried to give it as much power from above as he could, they are still often at odds because of their different nature.

It presents the situation today as a struggle between communes trying to become self sufficient, to organize and give power to their people, a right wing faction coming from the rich strata of Venezuela's still essentially capitalist society, and the state, which seemed to me to stand a bit in between.

At times it felt like the author is romanticizing the communes, their culture and the revolution, although he still gave nuance to my existing, simplistic view of the situation.

All in all I'd recommend this book to anyone who's wondering what the hell is up in Venezuela.