I’m making my way through Lindsay Ellis’s Apostles of Mercy and reserving full judgment until the end (of the book & probably series) but I will say I’m not super crazy about the fact that the one Jewish character in this series is supposedly responsible for multiple American war crimes, including torturing Muslims & bombing children in the Middle East
what I can say that’s positive is that there are a lot of elements to his character that I do like, it was always clear he’s somewhat misunderstood, and he’s finally getting much needed time as one of the main PoV characters in the series, and that has added a lot more humanizing details that complicate other characters’ picture of him. the unreliable narration & themes of prejudice & distrust escalating conflict & causing people to demonize others are central to the story, and there are more than a few moments in the series where the other characters misunderstand & reveal prejudice/ignorance about him through micro-aggressions & the author is very clearly cognizant of & intentional about that, so that at least gives me some hope. there’s absolutely a way to write the story in a way that it eventually becomes evident that a lot of assumptions about him are built on exaggerated, incomplete information warped by ignorance & prejudice, and still have him be that fun rough-around-the-edges, morally-gray, bit-of-an-asshole-but-ultimately-trying-to-do-the-right-thing character, and not like… a very offensive stereotype.
but then I hear Lindsay Ellis talk about the Tanakh or the I/P conflict and I think, “yeah no l don’t trust her to do that” 🙃
