I’m not sure how free we are around here with spoilers regarding the Mistborn trilogy, so I’ll try my best to avoid anything that will get me strung up.
The Mistborn trilogy left everything on the table, so to speak, with regards to the validity of a particular religion and its deitie(s). I worried the final scenario left no room for other religions to manifest in that world thereafter, and yet here we have Alloy of Law, which involved a few different religions (some of which we -the readers- know to be false) and somehow it seemed to work. My questions are:
1.What were some general challenges that you had to deal with when establishing the religious backdrop of the story?
2.Though you include brief examples of interaction with a deity in the novel, can you further explain some of the limits of that deity’s ability to interact with the world in which the story takes place? The brief explanation in the novel seemed rushed. Then again, there didn’t seem to be room for much philosophical debate during the awesome actions scenes.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to deal with questions like these.
You covered the biggest challenge. However, you have to remember that as a religious person, I do believe in God in our world–and we have a ton of religions, many of which are related and interpreting the same concepts and scriptures in many different ways.
As for this deity, you’re right–this book didn’t have the space for a lot of philosophy. However, I can get into it a little bit here. He does not interact partially because of his innate nature, which allows him to see many different sides of a lot of different debates and activities. On the other hand, I am a firm believer that the nature of free will demands people to actually be given opportunities to make decisions. Stopping them just before, ala Minority Report, doesn’t cut it for me. So, the deity in question feels he must be very careful about direct involvement, instead letting people act and react–and letting choices be made.
That said, I want him to be involved. Just more in a “I give people the tools they need to accomplish goodness,” rather than “I’ll just step in and make sure everyone does everything right.”
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