Follow Friday September 9

This is Follow Friday, hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read

Today's Question is:

Q. Have you ever wanted a villain to win at the end of a story? If so, which one?

I have a somewhat complicated answer here. I am a fan, from way back, of occasional stories where the villain (or, more likely, the character of ambiguous morals) comes out just as well as the hero, or gets what they were after no matter what the hero does because of a Xanatos Gambit (i.e. all roads lead to victory). Well developed characters of ambiguous or complicated morality are always welcome, and they should accomplish their goals as often as (or more often than) anyone else.

When a book has actually flat-evil villains, I don't like depressing endings, but I do sometimes enjoy the bittersweet. While I am looking forward to the new book Pirate King, the previous Russell/Holmes novel, The God of the Hive (see review), is an example of a book where I thought the ending went too much the protagonists' way, and it just would have been a more interesting ending if it had been a more mixed victory.

Thinking back through recent reads...
Leviathan Wakes would have been more interesting (and I would be more interested in the idea of a sequel) with a straight 'villain wins' ending. What it had was close to that, but fairly wishy-washy.

(Villains winning is also one of the many many ways that Twilight could have sucked less, (see my review for a dozen different endings I thought up) but that seems like an easy target... )

Happy Blog Hopping!