Ed Adams - Tyrant Review - Sasha P.

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“An extremely useful novel. Highly recommended for… analysts of Western decline.”

— Review by “Sasha P.” (Diplomatic Attaché, cultural desk, Washington DC)

Tyrant is a remarkable document. While presented as fiction, it offers unusually detailed insight into the psyches, procedures, and terminal neuroses of America’s elite administrative class. The prose is sharp — even surgical — cutting through the theatre of democracy to reveal its exhausted circuitry.

What struck me most was the author’s fluency in the language of control: surveillance masquerading as convenience, nationalism performed via streaming platforms, and the weaponisation of nostalgia. These are not imaginative exaggerations; they are field notes disguised as literature.

The character of Cardinal is perfectly rendered: grotesque yet plausible, comic yet tragic, utterly convinced of his own legitimacy even as his empire buckles beneath its own simulacra. Vescovi, however, is the true north — a cool operative in a boiling room, patient and precise. It would be impolite to say he reminds me of anyone I know.

Azaria’s subversion of the loyalty economy is… instructive. Her tactics deserve further study.

In short, Tyrant is not just a novel. It is, let us say, a diagnostic artefact. One can only hope not too many Americans read it too carefully.

That would be… inconvenient.