I just recently finished one of my favorite book series – The Chronicles of the High Inquest by S. P. Somtow.  The first time I read these was while I was in college, after pulling The Light on the Sound and Utopia Hunters from a box of books going to the goodwill.  It took me a fair bit to find the other books in the series (I wasn’t able to find The Throne of Madness until I moved to Boulder, well after my first read through), but after getting myself new copies of the whole series and reading them start to finish again, I’m glad I did.

I don’t really know what drew me to these books specifically (maybe it was the fact that it was a series, and, at the time, one book was too short to hold my attention), but I do know that they helped me shape a philosophy of living that has guided me since.  Part of this came to be because of what was going on in my life at the time (I was looking for rational coping mechanisms), but another part was that it appealed to my deep-seated concept of what good is.

In particular, the ideals epitomized by the High Inquest, and Ton Elloran specifically, ring true to me.  First and foremost, that power has consequences and those that wield power are responsible for those consequences.  Further, being responsible for those consequences also involves acknowledging the irreversibility of action, and thus wielding that power with conviction.  Finally, that wielding power responsibly is hard – it is a burden to bear and not everyone is up to it.

And yet, the High Inquest has built an institution around these ideals, and that institution must fall, which is also a good thing.  I don’t believe the reason for this is the dysfunction that grew from the institution (or something pithy like “power corrupts”), rather, that individuals should have power and deal with the responsibility.

With the Chronicles of the High Inquest, all of this gets wrapped up into a story around these absolutes.  With those wielding power as gods in a mythic power struggle…  …And yet, they deal with human issues.  This dichotomy, for me, always hits the sweet spot, and S. P. Somtow does it exceptionally well.