retribution

I'm not a frequent reader. I usually only read books I've heard about and expect to be good, like the Harry Potter books, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or other books people have let me borrow. I was standing in Borders (That's what I do when I go to bookstores. I stand.) in the science fiction setting, looking at books I own and like, when I saw a book with an interesting cover, The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks.

I thought, awesome! Assassins right on the cover! Score, dude! So I bought the first one and I couldn't put it down. I loved it! So I went back and bought the second two.

SPOILER ALERT

The trilogy follows Kylar Stern in a rags-to-riches (kinda) story as he comes from being an orphan child (named Azoth) with nothing to the best wetboy (basically, assassins with magic) in the world.

SPOILER END

I've read some interesting things in there, like one conversation between the protagonist and a mage who can see the future that had a lot of phrases I'd love to use as Facebook statuses. Another interesting thing I read somewhere in there was something like, "There is only one sin: stealing. Everything else is a variation of that. When you murder, you take a man's life from him. When you sleep with another man's wife, you steal the sanctity of their marriage."

That's not the way most people see it (in the Bible, there are TEN commandments), but I think that's an interesting perspective. When we don't give all the glory to God, aren't we taking what is rightfully his? If people thought like that, would they be so quick to destroy someone's reputation with gossip? Would they see things that they dismiss as okay as sinful?