Seal of the Worm (Shadows of the Apt, #10)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Te Mosca wanted to call to the Wasps: I am a Master of the College! I trained in magic with the Moth-kinden! I have healed wounds and saved lives! I am someone! I matter! But, standing in that great assembly of the doomed, she was less and less convinced in that last article of faith. She was only valuable to the world in one way: one more life to be snuffed like a candle.

The more I think about this the more the similarities to the worm are apparent. Clearly, comparison to the holocaust is inevitable but, I don’t think that’s the point or, only part of the point. This is about futility and how in the face of overwhelming emotive ‘force’ we fail, we start to see salvation where it cannot possibly exist. We convince ourselves to be our own worst enemies and call those enemies friends.

‘But an Empire is not an army. It is not some little tribe in the hills, where a chief knows every one of his village by name, and it is not a military force where an instant’s indecision is sufficiently disastrous that one man must take charge.