Spoilers for TRiH, if you haven't read it. If you haven't, though, go read it. Trust me just this once. > > TRiH basically says Yahweh is not > > omnipotent, not the Creator, and a lying deluded tyrant. > > Damien > Ah, then. I *didn't* misjudge the book. > Mia If I may interject ... Yes, actually, I'm afraid you did. I honestly think that you both misjudged it. If I may quote from the Right Honorable and Sorely Missed Roger Zelazny, who says two words at the front of the book: "I read the beginning to see what he was doing. ... When I realized where he was going with this story, my first reaction was, "He isn't going to be able to pull this one off." Not without getting trite, or cute, or moralistic -- or failing into any number of the many pitfalls I foresaw with regard to this material. I was wrong. He not only avoided them all, he told a fantastically engaging story with consummate grace and genuine artistry. I had not seen anything really new done with this subject since Anatole France's _Revolt_of_the_Angels_, with the possible exception of Taylor Caldwell's _Dialogues_with_the_Devil_. And frankly, Brust's book is a more ambitious and successful work than _Dialogues_." I personally have not read France's _Revolt_of_the_Angels_, but I -have- read Caldwell's _Dialogues_. This one I read sort of on the sly over a period of several weeks, stealing pages and paragraphs from where the book rested in the 'to be donated' box in my parents' garage. To be brief, I was fascinated, and I well and truly could understand exactly what Lucifer meant by his entire Rebellion. His was not a rebellion of war, it was an ideological debate -- 'You are wrong, and I shall demonstrate why, thus.' In TRiH, the author explores the nature of the Rebellion along the lines of a 'What If?' What if Yahweh was not utterly omniscient? What if the ideological debate was not over the pre-eminence of Man or whatever other story one prefers? What if -- and this is the most -important- 'what if' in the entire book -- what if, at the beginning of all things, people had no concept of -lying-?? This, truly, is one half of the very core of the book. Abdiel lies. Because nobody else has even a smidgen of a REASON to think that anyone would NOT tell the truth (witness all of the broken hearts in Lilith's wake), everyone automatically falls for his lies. Things are taken at face value. Michael defends Abdiel after Ariel's death, because he knows of no reason for Abdiel to BE pursued, except for the reasons that Abdiel has fed him in regards to Satan and Beelzebub. Satan and Beelzebub are chasing him with death on their minds; Abdiel screams for help. It just -looks- bad, that's all. The other half of the core of the book -- something which is revealed at the very end -- is that both Satan and Yahweh are massively prideful individuals. Neither will back down, especially when Yeshuah points out that everyone will laugh them out of Heaven if they admit to having been hornswoggled. >From Yahweh's point of view, he didn't lie and, really, he didn't -- he exaggerated massively, though, but this does not make him a 'lying, deluded tyrant'; it just makes him the victim of massive flattery and caught in a very bad position whence there is no escape. From Satan's point of view, he DID do everything on the up-and-up, and he wasn't going to back down one iota >from that. In truth, SKZB makes the single presumption that YHWH was not the Supreme Being, just that he was the first. Everything else follows from that, that this really IS the beginning, that things are said and done that have never been said and done before, that 'suspicion' and a lot of other ugly things are nonexistant because they simply have -never-happened-. To call this one presumption 'snarky, conceited atheism' is to do the work and its author each a vast disservice; it is a single literary presumption, sort of like presuming that Lucifer and Michael exchange correspondance a la _Dialogues_with_the_Devil_. IMO, the thought or reaction that this is a deliberate slur upon the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mindset is akin to the same thought or reaction of choosing one's reading material on account of whether or not it plays up to the religion of your preference. I do not say that I too am not victim to this; I become annoyed at any work that presents witches and witchcraft as the infamous 'tools of the devil'. I do, however, permit the author his beliefs, and do not deride the book because of a literary mechanic -- presuming, of course, that I found the characters, plot, etc. otherwise engaging. If it's a thin-clad monogram against my religion, I usually laugh myself silly. If you have not read _To_Reign_In_Hell_, read it and make your own decision. But certes, make your own decision, and let not others decide for you; therein lies the inability to think for yourself, as well as a myriad of other sorrowful events. Think. Felix, the Unforgiven Knights Guardian and Marshal http://www.misguidedgames.com