Tangential question... am I the only person who still likes the odd moustache-twirling pastiche?
I have to say, I have an odd relationship with reading morally dubious PoVs. I can read more or less anything as long as there's some degree of self-awareness. It's when you've got characters who are PoS and don't even realise why other people think they're a PoS I end up throwing the book across the room. But that's when they've got *some* PoVs. I haven't really read much with a straight up nasty main PoV. I've dodged Prince of Thorns because of this, despite really liking the prose in the kindle sample. I'm not totally sure why. I'll consume such stories in other mediums but not fantasy books.
One story I've read with a lot of bad mofos where I still sympathised with the characters is Watchmen. I think its the 800lb gorilla in the room when it comes to grey vs grey.
I think there's a place for moustache-twirling villains. Star Wars, for instance is very much a story about good versus evil, so it makes very little sense for the bad guys to be sympathetic unless it's a redemption arc for them. We
want to see Darth Vader choke his way around the galaxy before he finally becomes human again. But we also don't want to see Palpatine get redeemed, because he's the evil that drove Darth Vader to be the man he became. Vader's redemption makes us hate Palpatine
more.
With
Jack of Thorns Laurence starts out as someone who believes he is irredeemable, unsalvageable, and worthless. That's the start of his hero's journey, not the end of it. He's so convinced he's a PoS (because that's the message we send to addicts) that it takes an external force for him to realise that he isn't. Meanwhile Quentin isn't convinced he's very much of anything, despite bearing a courtesy title and being heir apparent to the peerage and an awful lot of money and power. He has some mental health issues, has been forcibly kept at arm's length from the real world, and
his hero's journey requires external force to make him take a good, hard look at reality and start to deal with it.
With
Reeve of Veils we have almost the opposite: Freddy is driven by his need for justice, but he
will use underhanded methods to get it. He ends up accidentally saving people's lives, but by and large he really is only out for his own interests and woe betide anyone who messes with his stuff. He openly identifies as a sociopath, has no interest in people with rigid and inflexible morals, and will do nasty sh*t to get what he wants. He's no hero, he is every inch the Magnificent B*stard, and he relishes it.