Campaign for the American Reader: Five villains who see themselves as heroes

Thursday, October 03, 2019

Five villains who see themselves as heroes

Jenn Lyons was a graphic artist and illustrator for twenty years and has worked in video games for over a decade. She previously worked on The Saboteur and Lord of the Rings: Conquest at EA Games. She is based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Her epic fantasy series A Chorus of Dragons includes A Chorus of Dragons and (coming soon) The Name of All Things.

At Tor.com, Lyons tagged five notable villains who see themselves as heroes, including:

Shuos Mikodez/Shuos Jedao/Nirai Kujen, Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee

I know Yoon Ha Lee loves the same sort of villains I do, because he gave me three of them to choose from. First, we have Shuos Mikodez, the charming and thoroughly debauched genius who runs the intelligence branch of the empire. Then there’s Nirai Kujen, who has warped the empire into a banquet of atrocities in his quest to create a post-scarcity universe. And of course villain/hero Jedao, who can (and does) do almost anything to stop Nirai Kujen. ‘Acceptable losses’ start to take on a whole new dimension when the populations of entire planets fall within that definition. Jedao and Mikodez are both arguably anti-heroes/anti-villains, but Kujen’s label is far less open for debate. Kujen leaves a trail of devastation through the lives of trillions—and all for reasons he thinks are entirely justified. No child will go hungry on his watch, but millions will die the most gruesome of deaths to support the hierarchical calendar that makes interstellar travel possible.