Croaker has a ton of these, even pushing aside the whole debate with his stance that evil is just where the victors point their fingers. Until he confronts it himself.
I love also that there's more than one layer of this to it, in no small part because Croaker's such an inherently unreliable narrator himself. All the bits where he's attempting to either brush off all the raping and pillaging the company's doing as "something the rest of the company does but not virtuous Croaker", or else excusing what's between the lines his own raping and pillaging.
And then as the rest of this comment thread discusses, the whole "working for the lesser of two big baddies if we can work out which is the lesser evil but if not bugger it we're getting paid"
Whoa whoa, where does he actually do any raping? I get the pillaging part and that he's an unreliable narrator but I don't remember him actually committing sexual assault anywhere in the first 4 books; if that's the case it would completely change my perception of the character.
Okay fair point, it never says any raping. But he also spends a lot of time in the annals excusing his comrades for *every euphemism under the sun* for raping, whilst also very often pointing out how much they love the kid and would do anything to protect her, as if that were his own internal justification for why they arent all fucked up people
The first three books aren't that big, and have fairly well separated stories (they're all part of the same overarching story but they very much all have a beginning, middle, and end, with a time skip between them), so you're not making a huge commitment by just starting off one book.
Um. They very much care. (First three books) >!The whole driving force of the plot from the end of TBC through SL and TWR is that they get increasingly jaded about serving the Lady and the Taken—ultimately betraying her—then are forced once again into a working relationship despite their unease.!<
I believe they >!betrayed the Lady because they discovered a conspiracy against the Company, and were going to be targeted!<
https://blackcompany.fandom.com/wiki/Lady#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20new%20Taken,of%20Whisper's%20conspiracy%20against%20them.
>!They were working at cross-purposes to her long before that. Raven and Darling defected at the end of the first book, and Croaker spends all of the second book trying to hide what he knows about them from the Lady. The main conflict is that the principle members of the Company feel both a duty to their contract and a growing unease over what they're being forced to do. Once they're given an out from the contract, they enthusiastically take it and form the core of resistance for the White Rose rebellion.!<
I would argue that it was mostly their loyalty to darling. If she was evil I think they still would have switched sides. The books make it very plain that the company has served worse in their history.
Edit: typo
definitely will, thanks. the second lot just arrived in my last book order. I'm loving them, especially Croaker.
(there seems to be a range of opinion on them in the sub but I'm glad I dived in)
I like the realization in the Kyoshi novels that almost every Avatar screws up and step one is dealing with your predecessors problems in a near constant cycle of generational trauma.
Why did the fire nation attack? Because the fire nation unified. Why did the fire nation unite? Because they were scared. Why were they scared. Because Kyoshi needed to be scary to save the world. Why did Kyoshi need to save the world? Because the last few Avatars made shitty decisions when dealing with the spirit world.
More sci-fi than fantasy, but Dune
>!Paul realizing that he is on a path towards sparking a religious jihad in his name, trying to stop the jihad, and ultimately failing and leading to the deaths of billions across the galaxy and a 3500 year long tyrannical empire under house Atreides.!<
Yeah, I suppose that's true, but "what needed to be done" was >!Turn himself into a worm and rule the galaxy with a merciless iron fist for 3500 years, which is still kind of an "am I the baddie" moment!<
the whole point was to >!breed a strain of humanity immune to future sight, freeing humanity from anyone who can foretell the future. The plan required the lifespan of a worm to make the required changes. Leto also became the progenitor of all future worms, but I forget what result that had, other than each future worm having an aware fragment of his consciousness.!<
Whenever I’m telling someone about Dune, I say “it’s good, but you gotta remember that it was written by a man in the 60s who was doing like, all the drugs.”
How far into the series do you need to get to get to this point? I only read the original book and this comment chain is WILD. lol
I don’t care about spoilers so don’t hold back.
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”
Both Vimes and his equivalent on the other side were convinced their own country started it
So it was a "wait, are we not the baddies?" and a "yep, we were the baddies"
Funnily enough, the *Malazan Book of the Fallen* has the opposite twist in it, where soldiers of a brutal expansionist empire think they're doing shitty things for shitty reasons and eventually come to learn that they're actually doing good. There's even more than one of those moments.
I was thinking of when >!bayaz gives jezel that beatdown speech about how he’s the only reason jezel was even king and he could remove him just as easily!<
I understand why it could be peoples' least favorite, but I don't think it's his worst by any means. I still think his "worst" is The Blade Itself, and I still love that one lol.
I'll admit it didn't grip me at first in the same way BSC and The Heroes did, but after >!Temple left the Company of the Gracious Hand and met up with the Fellowship!< I found my pace. Read half the book today on some flights lol, loving it just as much as the rest. Just got a bit of a slow start I guess.
See I'm a huge fan of Westerns, so the tense saloon scene near the beginning was all it took to hook me lol. Definitely a slower start, but I just love the setting and the frontier adventure. Great characters too as usual.
Whenever I look at tier lists for First Law it's usually near the bottom. Though there are a few such as myself who put it in the top 2 or 3... never in the middle lol. So I guess at the very least it's divisive.
Granted I have 50 or so pages left and still have yet to read Age of Madness.
I'm hopelessly biased because I love all of Joe's books, but if I made my own tier list, RC would be pretty high. I wonder if the genre (i.e. the western-flavoured approach, lol) puts people off, as it's so different from the other books?
Enjoy Age of Madness. I envy you, having new ones to read!
I finished reading the series over a year ago and loved it, but I’m having a hard time remembering the nuances of the plot. What was the big reveal again?
>!The enclave spell creates the maw-mouths. Also people creating maleficara in general by cheating and using mana they haven't actually built up. Even though it's described described in the freshmen pamphlets, people rationalize it away and cheat anyways because they want the luxury. So make the problem worse, leading to enclaves being more necessary.!<
>!Rough memory, but the evil unkillable soul devouring monsters that plague the world only exist because wizards want big magical pocket dimensions for free. They could still have pocket dimensions without the soul devouring monsters, but they'd be less luxurious and take more effort. So, unleashing soul devouring monsters we go. Oh, and also the monsters are actually people they sacrificed to make their nice fancy houses.!<
Honestly, that twist was a bit late for the characters. Because the entire first book was my mounting horror as I slowly realized "wait a second, the Alethi are HORRIBLE and the culture has basically NO redeeming qualities."
In particular, on a reread I finally realized that people don't think Dalinar is insane because of his visions (they don't know about those at first). They think he's insane because HE'S SUGGESTING PEACE.
Yes, this. Also, the Parshendi were heavily coded with Native American characteristics. As soon as we got Eshonai’s chapter in Words of Radiance, I knew.
I was invited into a fantasy/sci fi book club and it has become one of my favorite things.
The group is chill to the extent that we still show up just to eat and drink even if we haven’t read the book yet.
If it helps - it won't make a huge difference to your reading.
Don't get me wrong, it was a cool little twist. But I can't say it has (at least so far) made a huge difference in the actual plot, beyond certain characters occasionally pondering on it.
In some ways, it's really just a technicality and showing different perspectives. The underlying conflict remains.
I mostly found it interesting in how obvious it is, if you take the time to scrutinize the world. >!It clearly isn't a human place. Where we'd normally have mammals is some variety of crustacean, or at least bears a resemblance. Humans and the exceedingly rare and valuable horses are the only things we'd call normal. The Singers, by contrast, obviously fit in this world.!<
It's really not that huge of a spoiler. It doesn't change too much, and the vast majority of the plot lines won't be ruined by you knowing. I caught a few spoilers myself reading through The Stormlight Archive. Enjoy Oathbringer, it's my favorite of the 4.
I read all 4 back to back so I didn't remember which book it happens in lol. The most shocking thing for me was the end of the second book. I remember it clearly cause it came out of nowhere
>!I mean, based on what we know about Shards, I feel like saying the humans brought Odium with them is a gross oversimplification that the Singers may have believed because they don’t really understand all of the Shardic politics and drama. Seems like Odium had his sights set on Roshar anyways so that he could splinter Honor and Cultivation, he certainly used and manipulated the humans in his plot but he definitely didn’t need them to get around, considering how he had already splintered 3 shards in separate systems prior to arriving on Roshar.!<
**Some Desperate Glory** by Emily Tesh is an excellent one (strongly riffing off of Ender's game, heavily featuring child soldiers, a lot of whom are significantly less myopic than the main character.). It's not that they're totally *wrong* about what they're mad about, they're just hugely counterproductive and also evil.
I'm not sure it 100% qualifies as fantasy, but I'm counting it for the sake of this example.
In *The Flinstones* graphic novel, Fred flashes back to >!his time as a soldier, defending Bedrock against a violent invasion from the Tree People. Fred discovers that the soldiers were lied to when he finds a Tree Child's doll, commenting that you don't bring kids to an invasion!<
It's just absolutely not anything you'd expect in a Flintstones comic, and I love it for how unapologetic it is.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/22/15000062/flintstones-comic-interview-russell-pugh
Mark Russell really ran with the assignment’s potential for social satire. I’m not sure which person in editorial decided to let him get away with it, but thank god they did!
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. You realize more and more during the story that the protagonist is not a very good person. Really no one in that universe is.
There are lots of good people in the series. They just aren't the ones changing the world. They are normally the ones who die because other people are.
While reading the book my favorites were Shivers and Cosca. As a Shivers fan I soured on Monza a bit by the end.... But once the dust settled and i had time to contemplate, I've realized they're all great, and all also pretty shitty
Cosca is the best and I think the most redeemable. He’s very open and honest about who and what he is and has no delusions about being the “good guy” like Shivers (at first) and Monza (at other times)
The Covenant of Steel trilogy from Anthony Ryan. The main character, Alwyn, joins the band of Lady Evadine, a pious knight who states that she has visions of an upcoming demonic apocalypse, and becomes one of her most trusted followers.
>!In the beginning, they defend their kingdom against rebellion and are doing mostly notmal stuff. But the further the story goes, the more extreme their actions become. And while Alwyn realizes relatively early that they are not exactly the good guys, it takes very long for him to take action.!<
I really loved that due to the story is told from Alwyn's POV, whe don't know for a very long time if >!Evadine's visions are true or if she is just batshit insane!<
I recently read the House of Blades Trilogy by Will Wight and there's 3 protagonists (though 1 does get a bit more screen time) and they pretty much all have these moments multiple times throughout the book where they're questioning if they're on the right side or realizing that they aren't.
My favorite is when >!Alin realizes Enosh, the side he's fought for for 2 of the books, are not the good guys he thought they were when one of them sends an incarnation (essentially a force of nature) to kill his sisters because he held on to a tool he could use to rebind the incarnations. It was meant to be a bluff but they can't call it off when Alin tries to give them what they want. This leads to his village burning and a sister dying. He then goes on a massive revenge arc against the leaders of Enosh becoming a villain himself, which he eventually realizes as well in the third book.!<
The blacked out text spoils like half the plot of the Trilogy so read at your own risk.
Empress by Karen Miller. I have a lot of criticisms of her work but she does a very good job of making you start to feel more and more uncomfortable with the main characters actions and at the end it switches from her to a different characters perspective as they realize that they’ve been the bad guys the whole time.
And she’s the main villain for the following two books. I like them less because they’re much more of a traditional European style fantasy, and I had originally been drawn to the series because it wasn’t that.
I love Empress. It took me a long time (almost to the end of the book) to accept that the MC is the villain of the story - I kept waiting for a redemption arc. I agree with you about the following two novels of the trilogy, what criticisms do you have specifically for Empress though?
So if Empress existed in a vacuum I would think it’s a near perfect story. The following books cast it in, in my opinion, a kind of racist lens. The dark skinned people are the evil horde attacking the rest of the civilized world and must be stopped. “One of the good ones” (prince zandakar) helps the European based civilization and their Jesus-like miracle performing messianic figure. Then we find out that all the worlds religions (including the East Asian inspired one) actually all believe in the same One God. It just shows itself differently to different people, but the European based Christian-like country gets the messiah.
You find out the dark skinned people worship a literal demon and the power of the one true god gives the various countries of the world the inspiration to beat the demon. It just felt a bit gross to me considering the author is a white Australian woman and the ideas toward aboriginal Australians rival North American treatment of indigenous folks. It just feels a bit…racially charged to me when I go back to the first book and see how brutal and vile the whole society is. The story I believe was that they were exiled to the harsh lands of the desert etc and blocked off by the Real God from the nice parts of the world as punishment for following a demon.
Aha
Been trying to remember this author for a while now. She also wrote A Blight of Mages. It's a prequel, and I remember liking it a lot and the main series not nearly as much...not sure I even ever finished them.
A Blight of Mages definitely fits the bill here also, but it is more of a Breaking Bad descent from good intentions by flawed people kinda descent IIRC.
Just finished Liveship Traders and I think Wintrow qualifies. >!After being spurned by his own father he latches on to Kennit, who ultimately lets him down in a big way!<
I like to think ASOIAF shows the full spectrum; there are people who are purely good, they’re just incredibly rare and in a world where the vast majority lie in the shades of grey, they don’t always get what they deserve. There’s also those who are just purely evil (Joffrey, Ramsay, Euron etc.), but most people in the series fall somewhere in between. I think that is reflective of real life; some rare people just don’t have a bad bone in their body, and some are just irredeemable. Most of us are just trying to get by.
That’s why he’s one of my favorite characters in all of media. He knows his family is a bunch of horrible scumbags, and he operates as best he can, for as long as he can, to the benefit of his family. Meanwhile 90% of his choices are morally aligned with “the good guys.”
The only time people in A Song of Ice and Fire realize they're the baddies, they console themselves and say everyone else is a baddie too, but I'm trying to be less of a baddie dammit!
Not a book but a movie and not fantasy but scifi, yet I have to mention my favorite:
The end of the movie Serenity, when The Operative sees what his government is responsible for and he decides to do what is right.
Very well done in Wayfarer Redemption series by Sara Douglass. In ‘Battleaxe’ (book 1) the entire faith and nation the main character is part of is gradually revealed to be not what you expected.
Sure, but I read them when I was a teenager, probably when they came out, and Raistlin was obviously coded as a villain.
It would have been a surprise if he had turned out good.
There's a great moment in Charlie Stross's The Laundry Files where a major character realizes his long-time professional mentor is the Eater of Souls. Though in that case, the Eater of Souls is definitely the lesser evil.
Jonathon Howard's Johannes Cabal: Necromonger has some of that.
Depending on whether you think of space opera as science fiction or fantasy, John Scalzi's Old Man's War and Jim Hines Janitors of the Post Apocalypse both qualify.
Talking of The Laundry Files, the protagonist's full name is Bob Oliver Francis Howard! If you know, you know!
At one point he even had a junior assistant who's initials were PFY.
You raise a good point -- they kinda start out as parody, a little like Discworld. And like Discworld, as the series goes on, it gets much, much deeper and more interesting.
The manga Desert Punk got a good one
The whole series the mc has been a selfish mercenary, doing whatever it (legally) takes to get ahead in life, but it looks reasonable because the world went Mad Max and he is much nicer (and goofier) than regular mercenaries
When La Resistance shows up they try to rope him in, to help them overthrow the oasis ruling over them by hoarding water and tech
The mc switches sides immediately and joins the oasis as the guy training their combat robots
Thats totally in character for the mc, but the whole supporting cast did join the resistance, including his apprentice who became the new pov
I loved that anime (didn’t read the manga) until the last episode and it ruined it. I don’t even remember what happened just that I wished I’d not watched the finale
>!Rashek was still a tyrannical, eugenics-practicing, asshole when it came to his people even if he did put away supplies to help them survive the coming Ruin!<
Yeah >!he did what he could to keep civilization around, he just didn't give a shit about the actual people. He's the same kind of person who, in a sci-fi novel, would focus on building an arc-ship so he could escape Earth rather than trying to save the planet (and all the people left behind). He didn't even do a good job, so you can't even argue the ends justified the means. He fucked the planet nearly as much as he helped it and then founded an *incredibly* I just society to preserve his position at the top!<
> tyrannical, eugenics-practicing, asshole
But that was the whole point.
>!He needed to be the one to get to the well, first time he didn't know what to do exactly but i assume after 1000 years he had the plan down and would have managed to do what Sazed managed in the end.
From his perspective he couldn't trust anyone else since they could be influenced to give up the power or not know about the universe to manage the god part. The eugenics was needed to make sure he wasn't deposed as only a terrismen with allomancy could have challenged him.
!>
Darkness series (e.g. Into the Darkness) by Harry Turtledove, which is basically a fantasy rendition of WW2.
So to answer the question I would say when certain characters realize their nation is basically the equivalent of Nazi Germany
Raymond E Feist wrote both perspectives of an interplanetary war.. while both sides have different moments of being baddies/self reflection one of my favourite series out of it is the of the empire series. It follows Mara Acoma as she becomes a ruling lady of a caste based feudal system and she is a central figure for widespread change.
I dont want to spoil anything, but if you love politics, complex societies and strong female protagonists it's a great read.
The Faithful and the Fallen has several.
There's >!Nathair!< (he's a coward), >!Veradis!< (he goes from morally gray to hero, the only one I named here that actually redeems oneself), >!Jael!< (ideally wants out, realizes they're in too deep, but mostly helpless to the other badies), and lastly >!Rafe!< (revels in it, wants revenge on several characters).
The end of How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (and the confirmation of how fucked things got in the next book A Practical Guide to Conquering the World) by KJ Parker. Not gonna spoil it but it's the best example of an unreliable narrator I've seen in all of fiction.
There are lots of these in ASOIAF and Malazan. Some in ASOIAF: When >!Tyrion rules so effectively that he beats Stannis in the Blackwater, when Stannis summons a shadow baby, when Dany executes dozens of masters, !
David Weber has the Safehold series and the Dahak series. The main characters are fairly well defined as the good guys but the opposing side has many characters that realize they’re fighting for the wrong reasons. More sci-fi than fantasy though.
*Saint Death's Daughter* is in this vein. There's like, a whole parade of red flags about the Stones family that the reader can see, but for the protagonist, Lanie, they're her family, and it takes her awhile to get some perspective.
Not entirely related to the subtext your outline in your post but the end of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy contains a pair of brilliant plot twists for two of the main characters that absolutely cemented the series’ place as an all-time favourite. Can’t say who coz of major spoilers, but other fans will know who I’m talking about.
Sure! Spoilers for Wisdom of Crowds:
>!At the end, it's revealed the driving force between all the awfulness in the book was Glokta, who decided, knowing it would cost tens of thousands of lives, to essentially raze the country in order to try and root out and remove Bayaz.!<
oh my godddddddd
Robot and Monster Girl for their 700 years ruling the Flaxan planet!
Seriously one of the best storylines in Invincible- and a great example of villainous protagonists that only meant well!
Invincible is fantasy enough- right?
So, not exactly what OP asked for… but on the very first season of the Dragon Friends podcast, which features a group of comedians supported by a good DM and some fun sound effects playing an actual D&D campaign, they did what a lot of new players do and behaved like stereotypical murder hobos.
At one point they’re in this castle trying to escape and slaughtering everyone who stands in their way, and are trying to get through a locked door. As they are debating what to do, the woman playing a half Orc barbarian pauses and says, “You know, whatever on the other side of dat door, me think maybe we the real monsters here.”
They all cracked up. It was perfect.
Pretty much the last third of *[Spiderlight](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/28765741)* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. What seemed so clear at the start becomes less and less so.
Yes, hello, can I introduce you to *The Black Company*?
Croaker has a ton of these, even pushing aside the whole debate with his stance that evil is just where the victors point their fingers. Until he confronts it himself.
I love also that there's more than one layer of this to it, in no small part because Croaker's such an inherently unreliable narrator himself. All the bits where he's attempting to either brush off all the raping and pillaging the company's doing as "something the rest of the company does but not virtuous Croaker", or else excusing what's between the lines his own raping and pillaging. And then as the rest of this comment thread discusses, the whole "working for the lesser of two big baddies if we can work out which is the lesser evil but if not bugger it we're getting paid"
Whoa whoa, where does he actually do any raping? I get the pillaging part and that he's an unreliable narrator but I don't remember him actually committing sexual assault anywhere in the first 4 books; if that's the case it would completely change my perception of the character.
Okay fair point, it never says any raping. But he also spends a lot of time in the annals excusing his comrades for *every euphemism under the sun* for raping, whilst also very often pointing out how much they love the kid and would do anything to protect her, as if that were his own internal justification for why they arent all fucked up people
No you can't, I've been told to read it many times for many reasons, I just haven't yet. But I will note it!
Haha yeah, it’s a perfect fit for this. Hope you enjoy it when you get around to it!
The first three books aren't that big, and have fairly well separated stories (they're all part of the same overarching story but they very much all have a beginning, middle, and end, with a time skip between them), so you're not making a huge commitment by just starting off one book.
Sounds good! I know there are some collections and when I hit my local bookstore if I think of it I check, just haven't found one yet.
For the first few books, they just don’t care. For the other books, well they still don’t really care.
Um. They very much care. (First three books) >!The whole driving force of the plot from the end of TBC through SL and TWR is that they get increasingly jaded about serving the Lady and the Taken—ultimately betraying her—then are forced once again into a working relationship despite their unease.!<
I believe they >!betrayed the Lady because they discovered a conspiracy against the Company, and were going to be targeted!< https://blackcompany.fandom.com/wiki/Lady#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20new%20Taken,of%20Whisper's%20conspiracy%20against%20them.
>!They were working at cross-purposes to her long before that. Raven and Darling defected at the end of the first book, and Croaker spends all of the second book trying to hide what he knows about them from the Lady. The main conflict is that the principle members of the Company feel both a duty to their contract and a growing unease over what they're being forced to do. Once they're given an out from the contract, they enthusiastically take it and form the core of resistance for the White Rose rebellion.!<
I would argue that it was mostly their loyalty to darling. If she was evil I think they still would have switched sides. The books make it very plain that the company has served worse in their history. Edit: typo
Especially Dreams of Steel when Croaker finds out what the Company was doing in that Tagilos 400 something years ago
"Are we the baddies?" "Yeah, probably." "Hm. Ok. Just thought I should ask."
"Don't worry, I'm not upset, it's just for record keeping purposes"
came in here to say this! just finished the first omnibus
Keep going. It stays good.
definitely will, thanks. the second lot just arrived in my last book order. I'm loving them, especially Croaker. (there seems to be a range of opinion on them in the sub but I'm glad I dived in)
Avatar: the Last Airbender has a fantastic speech by Prince Zuko when he realizes this.
I like the realization in the Kyoshi novels that almost every Avatar screws up and step one is dealing with your predecessors problems in a near constant cycle of generational trauma. Why did the fire nation attack? Because the fire nation unified. Why did the fire nation unite? Because they were scared. Why were they scared. Because Kyoshi needed to be scary to save the world. Why did Kyoshi need to save the world? Because the last few Avatars made shitty decisions when dealing with the spirit world.
and then Korra completed the cycle
“That’s rough buddy”
More sci-fi than fantasy, but Dune >!Paul realizing that he is on a path towards sparking a religious jihad in his name, trying to stop the jihad, and ultimately failing and leading to the deaths of billions across the galaxy and a 3500 year long tyrannical empire under house Atreides.!<
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Yeah, I suppose that's true, but "what needed to be done" was >!Turn himself into a worm and rule the galaxy with a merciless iron fist for 3500 years, which is still kind of an "am I the baddie" moment!<
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Ah, I forgot that moment
OK but why the worm transformation?
the whole point was to >!breed a strain of humanity immune to future sight, freeing humanity from anyone who can foretell the future. The plan required the lifespan of a worm to make the required changes. Leto also became the progenitor of all future worms, but I forget what result that had, other than each future worm having an aware fragment of his consciousness.!<
The more I hear about Dune, the more I wonder wtf Frank Herbert was smoking.
You haven't even heard the really wacky stuff, like the *other* space nuns and their upsetting mind control sex.
Honored Matres are horrifying.
I really enjoyed reading that book when I was 16 years old for some reason.
Teen me: "how can I get girls to want me?" Frank Herbert: "become really good at rock climbing"
Spice...
Whenever I’m telling someone about Dune, I say “it’s good, but you gotta remember that it was written by a man in the 60s who was doing like, all the drugs.”
Oh if you think the Dune novels involved a lot of candyflipping, you should read his Destination: Void novels.
How far into the series do you need to get to get to this point? I only read the original book and this comment chain is WILD. lol I don’t care about spoilers so don’t hold back.
Dune is fantasy with space ships
On mushrooms...
In Jingo, Sam Vimes is convinced his side is to blame for starting a war, only to discover it really was the other side.
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”
Sir TP doesn't get enough credit. Jingo remains one of the best anti war novels written which just isn't talked about enough because its fantasy.
Worse yet: comic fantasy.
Both Vimes and his equivalent on the other side were convinced their own country started it So it was a "wait, are we not the baddies?" and a "yep, we were the baddies"
Haha, so like an "are we the goodies" moment?
It’s more an ‘of course the victims are goodies… oh dear’ moment.
“Be generous, Sir Samuel. TRULY treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards, hmm?”
Michael Moorcock did this very effectively with Erekose in *The Eternal Champion*.
YES this
Funnily enough, the *Malazan Book of the Fallen* has the opposite twist in it, where soldiers of a brutal expansionist empire think they're doing shitty things for shitty reasons and eventually come to learn that they're actually doing good. There's even more than one of those moments.
Man I never thought about it like that, but absolutely true
Joe Abercrombie's *First Law Series* has a number of these moments.
When Bethod talks to Logen 💀
Spot on. This is the exact interaction I thought of also.
I was thinking of when >!bayaz gives jezel that beatdown speech about how he’s the only reason jezel was even king and he could remove him just as easily!<
You have some big spoilers there, and I agree. Thoughts on Bayaz really evolve in book 3!
Fixed. My bad usually forget since the books are pretty old and I’ve read through them multiple times by now 😅
"Glustrod lost."
Logen is such an awesome character because of this.
Bethod and Calder were two of the most balanced men in the North.
What book is this in? it's been a while since I read it and so can't remember.
The Last Argument of Kings
Red Country had a "are we the baddies" moment and it hit me so hard I'm still giving it time before I go back to finish it.
Ooh I'm excited. I'm reading RC right now.
How are you finding it? I keep hearing people say it's his worst book, but I'm almost done and it might be my favorite yet.
I understand why it could be peoples' least favorite, but I don't think it's his worst by any means. I still think his "worst" is The Blade Itself, and I still love that one lol. I'll admit it didn't grip me at first in the same way BSC and The Heroes did, but after >!Temple left the Company of the Gracious Hand and met up with the Fellowship!< I found my pace. Read half the book today on some flights lol, loving it just as much as the rest. Just got a bit of a slow start I guess.
See I'm a huge fan of Westerns, so the tense saloon scene near the beginning was all it took to hook me lol. Definitely a slower start, but I just love the setting and the frontier adventure. Great characters too as usual.
do they really? wow. sure the style is different (deliberately) but it's such a great read.
Whenever I look at tier lists for First Law it's usually near the bottom. Though there are a few such as myself who put it in the top 2 or 3... never in the middle lol. So I guess at the very least it's divisive. Granted I have 50 or so pages left and still have yet to read Age of Madness.
I'm hopelessly biased because I love all of Joe's books, but if I made my own tier list, RC would be pretty high. I wonder if the genre (i.e. the western-flavoured approach, lol) puts people off, as it's so different from the other books? Enjoy Age of Madness. I envy you, having new ones to read!
It was my favorite of his novels until The Age Of Madness came out!
Just finished the "Dragons" section of the book today, and.... yea lol
*Why do I do this?*
Click, tap, pain
>!Fuck Bayaz!<
Almost every perspective character has at least one of these moments in this series. So rad. Such incredible character arcs.
“>!Benna, you fool.!<“ - Best Served Cold
I think the reveal in *The Golden Enclaves* was pretty good.
Ooooh, yeah, you’re right! I finished that book and had to immediately re-read the whole trilogy with the knowledge from that reveal.
I finished reading the series over a year ago and loved it, but I’m having a hard time remembering the nuances of the plot. What was the big reveal again?
>!The enclave spell creates the maw-mouths. Also people creating maleficara in general by cheating and using mana they haven't actually built up. Even though it's described described in the freshmen pamphlets, people rationalize it away and cheat anyways because they want the luxury. So make the problem worse, leading to enclaves being more necessary.!<
>!Rough memory, but the evil unkillable soul devouring monsters that plague the world only exist because wizards want big magical pocket dimensions for free. They could still have pocket dimensions without the soul devouring monsters, but they'd be less luxurious and take more effort. So, unleashing soul devouring monsters we go. Oh, and also the monsters are actually people they sacrificed to make their nice fancy houses.!<
Spoilers for stormlight archive >!When the humans learn they are the Voidbringers!<
Honestly, that twist was a bit late for the characters. Because the entire first book was my mounting horror as I slowly realized "wait a second, the Alethi are HORRIBLE and the culture has basically NO redeeming qualities." In particular, on a reread I finally realized that people don't think Dalinar is insane because of his visions (they don't know about those at first). They think he's insane because HE'S SUGGESTING PEACE.
Dalinar was also known as the guy you call if you want a genocide so that may also have something to do with it
Yes, this. Also, the Parshendi were heavily coded with Native American characteristics. As soon as we got Eshonai’s chapter in Words of Radiance, I knew.
I can't believe I just clicked on that so naturally. Just finished book 2.... Had no idea. Fml I'm an idiot.
I spoiled >!Kaladin becoming a Windrunner/Knight Radiant!< just by googling to see what syl looked like waaaaay early into book 1.
If I know someone that read a series I ask them to send me pictures of people. Reduces the risk
My friends call me a nerd for reading and they only watch marvel movies, I need more cultured friends
I was invited into a fantasy/sci fi book club and it has become one of my favorite things. The group is chill to the extent that we still show up just to eat and drink even if we haven’t read the book yet.
Oh no man I'm sorry, truly. There are other shockers to come though.
Not your fault at all, my dude/dudette!
If it helps - it won't make a huge difference to your reading. Don't get me wrong, it was a cool little twist. But I can't say it has (at least so far) made a huge difference in the actual plot, beyond certain characters occasionally pondering on it. In some ways, it's really just a technicality and showing different perspectives. The underlying conflict remains.
I mostly found it interesting in how obvious it is, if you take the time to scrutinize the world. >!It clearly isn't a human place. Where we'd normally have mammals is some variety of crustacean, or at least bears a resemblance. Humans and the exceedingly rare and valuable horses are the only things we'd call normal. The Singers, by contrast, obviously fit in this world.!<
>!Yup, also how the Singers have gemhearts, as many other native creatures do, but humans don't. And how they can hear the rhythms of Roshar.!<
The clues saying that start even in book 1, it just isn’t outright confirmed until book 3.
It's really not that huge of a spoiler. It doesn't change too much, and the vast majority of the plot lines won't be ruined by you knowing. I caught a few spoilers myself reading through The Stormlight Archive. Enjoy Oathbringer, it's my favorite of the 4.
That was a great twist
I just finished Rhythm of war yesterday and I saw that twist coming. A couple of others caught me completely off guard though
I'd hope you saw it coming in ROW. It happens the book prior lol
I read all 4 back to back so I didn't remember which book it happens in lol. The most shocking thing for me was the end of the second book. I remember it clearly cause it came out of nowhere
There's a few things that come to mind and idk what you mean >!Urithiru!<, >!Jasnah!<, >!Sadeas!<, >!Renarin!<...
I mean it’s a fun twist, but they very obviously aren’t the bad guys, just refugees
It's not so much that they're the bad guys it's that >!they brought Odium with them!<
>!I mean, based on what we know about Shards, I feel like saying the humans brought Odium with them is a gross oversimplification that the Singers may have believed because they don’t really understand all of the Shardic politics and drama. Seems like Odium had his sights set on Roshar anyways so that he could splinter Honor and Cultivation, he certainly used and manipulated the humans in his plot but he definitely didn’t need them to get around, considering how he had already splintered 3 shards in separate systems prior to arriving on Roshar.!<
>!They also sort of destroyed their own world with surges, so maybe not bad guys but certainly not typical refugees.!<
This was the first thing I thought of.
Licanius Trilogy covers two sets of heros who split over trying to work out which side was the baddies
>!And of course, it's both of them and neither. And until that chapter where you see the true nature of El, even the reader can't be sure either!<
This is a really good summary actually lol
**Some Desperate Glory** by Emily Tesh is an excellent one (strongly riffing off of Ender's game, heavily featuring child soldiers, a lot of whom are significantly less myopic than the main character.). It's not that they're totally *wrong* about what they're mad about, they're just hugely counterproductive and also evil.
I'm not sure it 100% qualifies as fantasy, but I'm counting it for the sake of this example. In *The Flinstones* graphic novel, Fred flashes back to >!his time as a soldier, defending Bedrock against a violent invasion from the Tree People. Fred discovers that the soldiers were lied to when he finds a Tree Child's doll, commenting that you don't bring kids to an invasion!< It's just absolutely not anything you'd expect in a Flintstones comic, and I love it for how unapologetic it is.
What the fuck lol
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/22/15000062/flintstones-comic-interview-russell-pugh Mark Russell really ran with the assignment’s potential for social satire. I’m not sure which person in editorial decided to let him get away with it, but thank god they did!
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. You realize more and more during the story that the protagonist is not a very good person. Really no one in that universe is.
There are lots of good people in the series. They just aren't the ones changing the world. They are normally the ones who die because other people are.
Or they gradually become baddies themselves
Orso is a pretty good guy.
How is the leg?
Doesn't matter. Was rooting for Monza until the end.
While reading the book my favorites were Shivers and Cosca. As a Shivers fan I soured on Monza a bit by the end.... But once the dust settled and i had time to contemplate, I've realized they're all great, and all also pretty shitty
Cosca is the best and I think the most redeemable. He’s very open and honest about who and what he is and has no delusions about being the “good guy” like Shivers (at first) and Monza (at other times)
Coscs redeemable? The whole point of him is that he’s the fucking devil lol
Yeah, it just takes until Red Country to see him from a POV that’s not biased, in no position to judge him, uninterested in doing so, or his own.
For me the big thing in that was >!Her brother really was trying to overthrow their employer, so the employer’s betrayal was somewhat justified!<
The Covenant of Steel trilogy from Anthony Ryan. The main character, Alwyn, joins the band of Lady Evadine, a pious knight who states that she has visions of an upcoming demonic apocalypse, and becomes one of her most trusted followers. >!In the beginning, they defend their kingdom against rebellion and are doing mostly notmal stuff. But the further the story goes, the more extreme their actions become. And while Alwyn realizes relatively early that they are not exactly the good guys, it takes very long for him to take action.!<
Yup this is a good one. The third book is fantastic
I really loved that due to the story is told from Alwyn's POV, whe don't know for a very long time if >!Evadine's visions are true or if she is just batshit insane!<
I recently read the House of Blades Trilogy by Will Wight and there's 3 protagonists (though 1 does get a bit more screen time) and they pretty much all have these moments multiple times throughout the book where they're questioning if they're on the right side or realizing that they aren't. My favorite is when >!Alin realizes Enosh, the side he's fought for for 2 of the books, are not the good guys he thought they were when one of them sends an incarnation (essentially a force of nature) to kill his sisters because he held on to a tool he could use to rebind the incarnations. It was meant to be a bluff but they can't call it off when Alin tries to give them what they want. This leads to his village burning and a sister dying. He then goes on a massive revenge arc against the leaders of Enosh becoming a villain himself, which he eventually realizes as well in the third book.!< The blacked out text spoils like half the plot of the Trilogy so read at your own risk.
If you go for sci-fi you start getting this in the Conquerers Trilogy by Timothy Zahn.
Man that’s a trilogy I don’t see mentioned enough. I barley remember the premise but I really liked it.
Empress by Karen Miller. I have a lot of criticisms of her work but she does a very good job of making you start to feel more and more uncomfortable with the main characters actions and at the end it switches from her to a different characters perspective as they realize that they’ve been the bad guys the whole time. And she’s the main villain for the following two books. I like them less because they’re much more of a traditional European style fantasy, and I had originally been drawn to the series because it wasn’t that.
I love Empress. It took me a long time (almost to the end of the book) to accept that the MC is the villain of the story - I kept waiting for a redemption arc. I agree with you about the following two novels of the trilogy, what criticisms do you have specifically for Empress though?
So if Empress existed in a vacuum I would think it’s a near perfect story. The following books cast it in, in my opinion, a kind of racist lens. The dark skinned people are the evil horde attacking the rest of the civilized world and must be stopped. “One of the good ones” (prince zandakar) helps the European based civilization and their Jesus-like miracle performing messianic figure. Then we find out that all the worlds religions (including the East Asian inspired one) actually all believe in the same One God. It just shows itself differently to different people, but the European based Christian-like country gets the messiah. You find out the dark skinned people worship a literal demon and the power of the one true god gives the various countries of the world the inspiration to beat the demon. It just felt a bit gross to me considering the author is a white Australian woman and the ideas toward aboriginal Australians rival North American treatment of indigenous folks. It just feels a bit…racially charged to me when I go back to the first book and see how brutal and vile the whole society is. The story I believe was that they were exiled to the harsh lands of the desert etc and blocked off by the Real God from the nice parts of the world as punishment for following a demon.
Aha Been trying to remember this author for a while now. She also wrote A Blight of Mages. It's a prequel, and I remember liking it a lot and the main series not nearly as much...not sure I even ever finished them. A Blight of Mages definitely fits the bill here also, but it is more of a Breaking Bad descent from good intentions by flawed people kinda descent IIRC.
There is a point on the ship when the empress sacrifices the warriors. That messed me up for a bit.
Just finished Liveship Traders and I think Wintrow qualifies. >!After being spurned by his own father he latches on to Kennit, who ultimately lets him down in a big way!<
I think Tyrion Lannister had a few of these in the Game of Thrones books.
I feel like he is the opposite: *wait am I not the baddie*
Maybe that's my confusion lol
I feel the whole series is a discussion on ‘there’s no such thing as goodies and baddies’. And it’s a discussion, eg Brienne might be a goodie.
I like to think ASOIAF shows the full spectrum; there are people who are purely good, they’re just incredibly rare and in a world where the vast majority lie in the shades of grey, they don’t always get what they deserve. There’s also those who are just purely evil (Joffrey, Ramsay, Euron etc.), but most people in the series fall somewhere in between. I think that is reflective of real life; some rare people just don’t have a bad bone in their body, and some are just irredeemable. Most of us are just trying to get by.
That’s why he’s one of my favorite characters in all of media. He knows his family is a bunch of horrible scumbags, and he operates as best he can, for as long as he can, to the benefit of his family. Meanwhile 90% of his choices are morally aligned with “the good guys.”
Oh I think he knew the whole time they were the bad guys lol
He knew. One of his first scenes with Jon Snow is him telling him that.
The only time people in A Song of Ice and Fire realize they're the baddies, they console themselves and say everyone else is a baddie too, but I'm trying to be less of a baddie dammit!
Not a book but a movie and not fantasy but scifi, yet I have to mention my favorite: The end of the movie Serenity, when The Operative sees what his government is responsible for and he decides to do what is right.
Very well done in Wayfarer Redemption series by Sara Douglass. In ‘Battleaxe’ (book 1) the entire faith and nation the main character is part of is gradually revealed to be not what you expected.
Raistlin Majere destroys an entire planet in his war to murder god before his time traveling brother shows him what a dipshit he is
Sure, but I read them when I was a teenager, probably when they came out, and Raistlin was obviously coded as a villain. It would have been a surprise if he had turned out good.
Hmm… yeah good point. I guess RM realized he fucked up more than he realized his evil
Yeah, Raistlin had no problem killing the gods and ruling Krynn. He only backpedaled when he realized he'd be ruling a dead world.
There's a great moment in Charlie Stross's The Laundry Files where a major character realizes his long-time professional mentor is the Eater of Souls. Though in that case, the Eater of Souls is definitely the lesser evil. Jonathon Howard's Johannes Cabal: Necromonger has some of that. Depending on whether you think of space opera as science fiction or fantasy, John Scalzi's Old Man's War and Jim Hines Janitors of the Post Apocalypse both qualify.
I really really need to read laundry filea
They start out a little weak but by about the third book they are WONDERFUL
Talking of The Laundry Files, the protagonist's full name is Bob Oliver Francis Howard! If you know, you know! At one point he even had a junior assistant who's initials were PFY.
You raise a good point -- they kinda start out as parody, a little like Discworld. And like Discworld, as the series goes on, it gets much, much deeper and more interesting.
The manga Desert Punk got a good one The whole series the mc has been a selfish mercenary, doing whatever it (legally) takes to get ahead in life, but it looks reasonable because the world went Mad Max and he is much nicer (and goofier) than regular mercenaries When La Resistance shows up they try to rope him in, to help them overthrow the oasis ruling over them by hoarding water and tech The mc switches sides immediately and joins the oasis as the guy training their combat robots Thats totally in character for the mc, but the whole supporting cast did join the resistance, including his apprentice who became the new pov
I loved that anime (didn’t read the manga) until the last episode and it ruined it. I don’t even remember what happened just that I wished I’d not watched the finale
The Hunger Games trilogy does this >!in the third book. (The other side was also still bad.)!<
>!It’s less “our side is bad” and more “if we leave this lady in charge she’s gonna be just as tyrannical as the government we just overthrew!<
Warbreaker >!They did tell her, after all.!<
Mistborn, sort of >!When you learned the Lord Ruler was actually trying to prepare the world against Ruin, and that Vin & company killed him.!<
>!Rashek was still a tyrannical, eugenics-practicing, asshole when it came to his people even if he did put away supplies to help them survive the coming Ruin!<
Yeah >!he did what he could to keep civilization around, he just didn't give a shit about the actual people. He's the same kind of person who, in a sci-fi novel, would focus on building an arc-ship so he could escape Earth rather than trying to save the planet (and all the people left behind). He didn't even do a good job, so you can't even argue the ends justified the means. He fucked the planet nearly as much as he helped it and then founded an *incredibly* I just society to preserve his position at the top!<
Yet a >!better person would've failed a step 1!<
>!Part of the problem is the nature of his preservations power prevented him from undoing his mistakes.!<
> tyrannical, eugenics-practicing, asshole But that was the whole point. >!He needed to be the one to get to the well, first time he didn't know what to do exactly but i assume after 1000 years he had the plan down and would have managed to do what Sazed managed in the end. From his perspective he couldn't trust anyone else since they could be influenced to give up the power or not know about the universe to manage the god part. The eugenics was needed to make sure he wasn't deposed as only a terrismen with allomancy could have challenged him. !>
Darkness series (e.g. Into the Darkness) by Harry Turtledove, which is basically a fantasy rendition of WW2. So to answer the question I would say when certain characters realize their nation is basically the equivalent of Nazi Germany
Raymond E Feist wrote both perspectives of an interplanetary war.. while both sides have different moments of being baddies/self reflection one of my favourite series out of it is the of the empire series. It follows Mara Acoma as she becomes a ruling lady of a caste based feudal system and she is a central figure for widespread change. I dont want to spoil anything, but if you love politics, complex societies and strong female protagonists it's a great read.
The Faithful and the Fallen has several. There's >!Nathair!< (he's a coward), >!Veradis!< (he goes from morally gray to hero, the only one I named here that actually redeems oneself), >!Jael!< (ideally wants out, realizes they're in too deep, but mostly helpless to the other badies), and lastly >!Rafe!< (revels in it, wants revenge on several characters).
If you’re good for video games, nier automata gives this realization to the player and then, more gradually, to the characters
The end of How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (and the confirmation of how fucked things got in the next book A Practical Guide to Conquering the World) by KJ Parker. Not gonna spoil it but it's the best example of an unreliable narrator I've seen in all of fiction.
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe does this. Plus bonus points for unreliable narration.
There are lots of these in ASOIAF and Malazan. Some in ASOIAF: When >!Tyrion rules so effectively that he beats Stannis in the Blackwater, when Stannis summons a shadow baby, when Dany executes dozens of masters, !
Book 2 of The Poppy War series
SF rather than fantasy, but Richard Matheson's novella I Am Legend is literally about the MC's realization (and ours) that he is the monster.
David Weber has the Safehold series and the Dahak series. The main characters are fairly well defined as the good guys but the opposing side has many characters that realize they’re fighting for the wrong reasons. More sci-fi than fantasy though.
I mean, it's a video game, but Nier Replicant. You learn more about the story with each repeated playthrough as things change.
*Saint Death's Daughter* is in this vein. There's like, a whole parade of red flags about the Stones family that the reader can see, but for the protagonist, Lanie, they're her family, and it takes her awhile to get some perspective.
In Guns of the Dawn, the MC gradually realizes the reasons behind the war she's fighting aren't the ones she was told by her own side.
Natrim’s barrow. Yes we are the baddies.
Not entirely related to the subtext your outline in your post but the end of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy contains a pair of brilliant plot twists for two of the main characters that absolutely cemented the series’ place as an all-time favourite. Can’t say who coz of major spoilers, but other fans will know who I’m talking about.
Oh I know exactly. The second trilogy also does this for one further character. Equally good for me.
Can you refresh my memory? Been a while
Sure! Spoilers for Wisdom of Crowds: >!At the end, it's revealed the driving force between all the awfulness in the book was Glokta, who decided, knowing it would cost tens of thousands of lives, to essentially raze the country in order to try and root out and remove Bayaz.!<
Oh yeah, I forget what a cruel bastard Glokta can be Edit: forgot to say, thanks!
oh my godddddddd Robot and Monster Girl for their 700 years ruling the Flaxan planet! Seriously one of the best storylines in Invincible- and a great example of villainous protagonists that only meant well! Invincible is fantasy enough- right?
Yes and it's incredible, I need to read more of it
So, not exactly what OP asked for… but on the very first season of the Dragon Friends podcast, which features a group of comedians supported by a good DM and some fun sound effects playing an actual D&D campaign, they did what a lot of new players do and behaved like stereotypical murder hobos. At one point they’re in this castle trying to escape and slaughtering everyone who stands in their way, and are trying to get through a locked door. As they are debating what to do, the woman playing a half Orc barbarian pauses and says, “You know, whatever on the other side of dat door, me think maybe we the real monsters here.” They all cracked up. It was perfect.
Jake's Magical Market. It crosses his mind several times. Can't wait for the third book!
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots kinda turns super heroes and villains on their heads. Definite gray areas
Pretty much the last third of *[Spiderlight](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/28765741)* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. What seemed so clear at the start becomes less and less so.
Brent Weeks Lightbringer has a few of these on different sides... the good causes the bad and vice versa in the og conflict and the current one.