Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture, #2)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Look, they’re clams. You’re kneeling before an altar that’s mostly all-you-can-worship seafood buffet.

living lives of virtuous squalor,

The Greater Good morphed into self-interest so easily; human history was full of it.

The conspiracy theorist’s dream, the cabal of the mighty getting together to obliterate the bulk of humanity just so they could be kings of what remained.

was a terrible thing to look into the heart of your culture and know that you were intended for monstrosity and only an active devotion to the good of others would keep you from it, even when those others hated you.