I found the book funny at first. The author's quips seemed to be dead-on from what I know of the rogue regime.
However...
Ms. Simmons seems to be determined not to utter the "C" word, the one that describes the totalitarian regime that literally owns the means of production and resembles a Stalinist state, except with medium-range ballistic missiles and an "intranet." It's almost as if she's afraid of offending her left-leaning friends in the United States. Paranoid? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Communist? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, BE JUDGMENTAL OR SOMETHING?!
So she reserves confines herself to talking about how the electricity is spotty and running water is a luxury (even though the fixtures are all there). You almost get the impression that if these things were fixed then Kim Il-Sung's delusion that he was going to "co-host" the Seoul Olympics would be unworthy of discussion, that Kim Jong-il's mishandling of the famine of the 1990s is just a distant memory and Kim Jong-Un's fascination with nukes and missiles is just a loveable quirk.
And the writing... goodness! Thank God Missileman can't drop the same number of A-bombs on America as the F-bombs Simmons dropped on North Korea... the country would be a radioactive wasteland from sea to shining sea. And really, I don't need to know how you and one of your handlers bonded over your periods.
I have no doubt that if this book had come out this year Kim Jong-Un would come off better than either Billy Graham or President Donald Trump.
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