Ah jeeze. I know it's not cool to write about the book you wish the author had written, but man, I wish I had read a nonfiction book about contemporary life in North Korea instead. Does anyone have any good recommendations for a book like that??

That said, Adam Johnson has traveled in North Korea and has a lot of very vivid details about the surreal, Catch-22-y dystopia that is North Korea. (I kept doing Google fact checks because I wanted to see if weird shit in here was true or not. I KNOW I'M MISSING THE POINT BUT I CAN'T HELP IT.)

The plot is interesting. Some of the threads about identity seemed a little heavy handed... is that the point? Is that his technique? Maybe for me, this is a 3 star novel with a 4 star concept??