I’d like to think I would have noticed the moral problems with what the “good” guys were doing on my own, and without the benefit of knowing who the author was. I think I would have, but I’m not totally confidence in my Milgram Resistance.
The ending did bother me, though. Why was Hirou willing to believe everything Vhazhar told him without trying to verify it? Why did he kill Dolf instead of accepting that Dolf was simply limited by the moral myopia of his own society, which he clearly was? Maybe exceptionally good people like Vhazhar could see the problems with the status quo, but it wouldn’t take an exceptionally evil person to NOT see them, so Dolf wasn’t necessarily a bad guy. Couldn’t Hirou have looked for another wizard who was willing to volunteer for the process? Or, hell, found some other trustworthy person to become the new god, and let Vhazhar prove his virtue by sacrificing his OWN wizardly ass to fuel the spell? He didn’t even ask Vhazhar what his new world would look like; he just decided that Vhazhar’s ideas were probably good, and that he could be trusted to not become corrupt.
I guess that ending was the best we could expect from someone like Hirou.
I’d like to think I would have noticed the moral problems with what the “good” guys were doing on my own, and without the benefit of knowing who the author was. I think I would have, but I’m not totally confidence in my Milgram Resistance.
The ending did bother me, though. Why was Hirou willing to believe everything Vhazhar told him without trying to verify it? Why did he kill Dolf instead of accepting that Dolf was simply limited by the moral myopia of his own society, which he clearly was? Maybe exceptionally good people like Vhazhar could see the problems with the status quo, but it wouldn’t take an exceptionally evil person to NOT see them, so Dolf wasn’t necessarily a bad guy. Couldn’t Hirou have looked for another wizard who was willing to volunteer for the process? Or, hell, found some other trustworthy person to become the new god, and let Vhazhar prove his virtue by sacrificing his OWN wizardly ass to fuel the spell? He didn’t even ask Vhazhar what his new world would look like; he just decided that Vhazhar’s ideas were probably good, and that he could be trusted to not become corrupt.
I guess that ending was the best we could expect from someone like Hirou.