A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

I paused, surprised to be asked if a specter from a folktale might be our culprit. “In my experience, ma’am, regular people are more than dangerous enough.”

“I appreciate it when you throw rocks at my ideas, Din. Keeps me from going too far up my own ass.

“You’ve all the prudence of an inebriated cow!

“We fear the elements, and plague, and the wrath of the leviathans. Yet if we are to see clear-eyed, we would admit that the will of men is as unforgiving as these. How many chieftains and champions have wrought just as much sorrow as the wet seasons? We must govern thoughtfully, then, and manage such passions wisely—for if these folk have their way, we shall return to nature primordial, and be as beasts, and all the world a savage garden, mindless and raging.”

a tragic creature, perhaps, determined to maintain himself even as he fell to pieces.

But a prideful creature can talk themself into believing that every deed they do is legitimate. Thus, they both giddily and greedily spin their own doom.”

“But is he a villain, or simple political swine? It is often hard to tell those two apart.”

there is perhaps no other genre of fiction more enamored of autocracies than fantasy.

Yet if the 2010s awed us with the power of autocrats, the 2020s seem hell-bent to refute it. More and more, it becomes impossible to deny that autocrats—like any ruler—are but men, yet men with no obligation to listen to their people, and thus acknowledge reality. This, in turn, makes them fools: fools that are very difficult to dislodge from their thrones, true, but fools nonetheless.