A lot of the writing is beautiful, though occasionally too bogged down in stream-of-consciousness weirdness. But the plot doesn't make much sense overall--why is he the Tyrant and why does he do what he does, where does the doctor come from, what is the Tyrant's goal in the end? Maybe asking for reasons is too much from a book that wants to follow dream logic, and maybe from the author's point of view it doesn't matter, but I prefer internal consistency in my surrealism. ( )

The Tyrant is slightly more accessible than Cisco's critically-acclaimed 2007 novel The Traitor, but still incredibly rich - both in terms of the language (my god, it's full of words!) and in terms of imagery. In fact, aesthetically, it's a bit reminiscent of J. K. Huysmans, albeit a good deal less self-indulgent and with more meta. There were many moments that stopped me dead to just marvel at a sentence or a paragraph...

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