X the Lost wrote:
When I read this story something about just struck me as wrong. For a while
I couldn't place what but then a passage from a book poped into my head.
This sums up my problem with Akane's attitude in the story.
The ring promised nothing, demanded nothing. But the explorer could
envision the world as he had alwayes dreamed it might be, a place free from
war and tyranny, all peoples liberated from want and ignorance. He could
make it so, force the world to match his vision- or break it all to pieces
in trying. He could free every country, every town or village, from evil.
But he could never free them from his own terrible reign.
-Artus's thoughts after finding the Ring of Winter. From "The Ring of
Winter" by James Lowder
Very good.
I addressed that issue in the story itself. The world as it now exists is in a
state of relative peace; Akane the Peacemaker pointed out that if her efforts
were to halt, her world would be in the middle of a global conflict in a matter
of weeks.
Real-life example: Yugoslavia. The Communists enforced an Age of Peace on the
ethnic factions there, but within weeks of their removal, they were busy
blasting each other back to the Stone Age, fighting with a ferocity greater than
ever seen before.
The Peacemaker's Age of Peace is an illusion; it will last until her death, and
end in blood and holocaust. And she knew it.
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Jack Staik
Property of Jillian
http://home.earthlink.net/~jstaik1043/otaku.htm
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