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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4925752" data-attributes="member: 40961">I can't say that its impossible for me to enjoy a book with an evil protagonist who commits rape.  Its just that it rarely happens.  In fact, I can't think of an example of it happening.   In books like Bones of the Dragon, by Weis and Hickman, the main characters are fantasy versions of Vikings.  And like Vikings they go on rape, loot, and pillage raids where they, in total historical accuracy, attack farming communities, murder people, and gang rape the women.  This all happens off stage (they try at one point but are magically thwarted), but we know the main character has participated in this and considers it honorable, manly activity.  Now the plot of the book series involves his society fighting against eradication by outside forces, and I can't help think to myself- Screw them!  Let 'em die!  Yeah, there are innocents in their culture too, women and children and such, but wouldn't it be a net positive for the world if the hero and everyone he knows and loves were horribly killed?  Probably.  They aren't good people. Jim Butcher's Codex Alera has similar problems, but worse.  It simultaneously tries to convince you of all the following things.  First, that rape is very bad and very traumatic to the victims and evidence of the evil of the rapists.  Second, that rape is totally sexy- aphrodisiac slave collars!  And more!  Third, that rape is totally legal and part of this society's laws and society is fine with that.  Fourth, that protecting this society is a good thing and the main character's a hero for doing it.  I know that technically speaking the main characters take down one rape den.  Good for them!  Now what about all the rest of them?  Oh, right, those didn't attack your family.  So they're fine, I guess. Vance, by comparison, maybe isn't even that bad.  He's just doing a classic plot from mythology.  Its just one that leaves me a little uneasy. I didn't finish either of those three series.  I finished a few Codex Alera books before deciding to just stop reading more.  I read to completion the first book in the Dragonships series, but don't intend to read the rest.  And I got through almost all of Dying Earth until I hit the point where the main character sells one woman to be raped and then personally rapes another all within a very small number of pages.  And I just decided that it wasn't fun anymore. I have put down books because of murder, too- The Weavers of Sarymar series.  Good books, but you're supposed to feel bad for characters when their families and loved ones get murdered, and yet some of the main characters murder people for their own convenience and this never gets mentioned or noticed as a potentially bad thing.  It just happens and is gone, but every time the character who committed the casual murder gets upset about someone killing their loved ones, I'm reminded that, when situations were switched, they did the same thing.  And the authors efforts to get me to empathize with them becomes blunted.</blockquote>

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