⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I hated him. I loved him. I couldn’t look away.”

— K.M. Treadwell, Verified Purchase

Richard Cardinal is the worst man to ever hold power in fiction. Which is precisely why he’s unforgettable. Think if Caligula ran a YouTube channel, or if Donald Trump was rebooted by a satirist with a god-tier grasp of algorithms and brand architecture. The man speaks in hashtags, governs in loyalty metrics, and sells the apocalypse like it’s a lifestyle subscription box.

And yet… you understand him. That’s what makes Tyrant so dangerous and so brilliant.

Cardinal is grotesque, yes — spray-tanned id, live-streamed psychosis, forever posing for a camera that might not be real — but the writing never lets you dismiss him as just a joke. He’s a system made flesh. A glitch that became a president. A monster we clicked into being.

I didn’t expect to feel this much. Or laugh this hard. Or whisper “oh no” so many times.

And by the time you reach the final chapters — when even the AI can’t fake him anymore — you realise: Tyrant wasn’t about Cardinal. It was about us.

And we still haven’t logged off.

Highly, terrifyingly recommended.