You know what we need?
A chance to feel uncomfortable.
And I don’t mean the squidgy uncomfortable that comes from reading about
zombies chewing on someone’s entrails.
No, this is a much more profound discomfort: the discomfort of realizing
that we, as a nation, have an amazing tendency to forget about the rest of the
world. Literally.
The Tyrant's Daughter gives readers a fantastic chance to
remember that there are other people, other lives, other ‘normals’ than those
we are used to: privileges, things taken for granted, and the fates of
innocents on the sidelines of events that are barely a blip on our national
news ticker. A daughter of an assassinated
tyrant begins a new life in America, and life here is nothing like the life she
was used to.
Give it a try. And,
yes, I think it is OK to dislike Bastian.
But his role and viewpoint add something to the realism of the story that
I think is important.
