YMMV / Lord of the World

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Felsenburgh is a Senator from Vermont in the 21st century who is a socialist. In the present day, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders self-identifies as a socialist.
  • More relevantly, the book calls out Marx and Hervé for leading the world down the path of socialism. While Hervé was indeed a Marxist at the time of publication, he would later join the far-right monarchist movement Action Française.
• Misaimed Fandom: When the book came out, some socialists rooted for Felsenburgh and thought he won at the end. One non-Catholic reader wrote that the novel "struck heaven out of my sky, and I don't know how to get it back again."
• Rooting for the Empire: Readers who disagree with the author’s views will sometimes root for the bad guys out of pure spite for no other reason than claiming that the non-Christians (except for Mabel) are total strawmen bearing little or no resemblance to their real-life counterparts.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • As much as Franklin hates and fears the Marxist states, it is true that they prevented many wars by eradicating nationalism, and Felsenburgh did broker an unprecedented peace. War is thought to be extinct by the middle of the book. However, when the state orders police to stand down and let innocent Christians be killed, it marks a turning point even for Mabel. It's even lampshaded by the Pope himself, in order to highlight that the very means by which these were achieved were ultimately in service of a far greater evil, setting up another good opposite of God in the Humanist cult and its message of universal brotherhood.
  • Much less defensible is Franklin telling Francis (who has just admitted that he no longer thinks any arguments for the faith are valid and is about to defect) that sure, Christianity isn’t true, but as long as smart people believe it it can’t be false. He basically says Francis is right but condemns him anyway. Even if the line is interpreted as meaning that intelligent Christians are the evidence Christianity is true, that still doesn’t work because it would also apply to every other religion or belief system and they can’t all be right. (Not to mention equivocating “can understand argument and learn new knowledge” with “is always right about everything”.)
• Values Dissonance: Before Felsenburgh takes over, how do we know the Marxists are evil? Because they exiled the royal houses of Europe to Rome. The Marxists don’t actually oppress anyone until Felsenburgh comes along, but the narrative treats this as beyond the pale because of the divine right of kings.
• Values Resonance: On the other hand, many Catholic readers and figures, like Joseph Pearce, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, hailed the work as prophetic of modern times, citing how secularism and humanism have increasingly supplanted traditional morality, how religious doctrine is not tolerated in the name of tolerance, and more. Pope Francis in particular routinely recommends the book and praises it for depicting "the spirit of the world which leads to apostasy almost as if it were a prophecy."