Modesitt’s books are invariably about the ethical use of power, and
The Ethos Effect is (unsurprisingly, given the name) no
exception. More bluntly, The Ethos Effect concerns this
question: if in the 1930’s you could foresee the rise of the Third Reich
and all of the associated pain, suffering, and death it would cause,
would you be justified if, given the capability, you were to nuke Germany
off of the map? It’s all cast in the far future, and the players are
different, but that’s more or less the question.

Spoiler Warning: I don’t usually include spoilers in my reviews,
but I feel I need to in this case. In case you don’t wish to read further,
I’ll give the bottom-line: this is a weak story well-told, and not up to
Modesitt’s usual standards.

Van Albert is a commander in the navy of the Taran Republic, one of a
number of large space-faring powers. The political situation is too
complicated to go into, but the most serious threat is a theocratic
totalitarian space empire which supposedly grew out of some unholy union
of Islam and the Mormon church–

I digress. Modesitt really seems to have it in for the Mormons, as this is
the second series in which they’ve been the bad guys. I don’t see it
myself. I don’t buy Mormon theology, and I find the origins of the LDS
church to be highly suspect, but there are lots of Mormons here in the
Foothills, many of them folks I grew up with, and they’ve never struck me
as any more prone to jihad than, say, the local Methodists.

But anyway, the Shepherds, as they called, have been expanding slowly for
a couple of centuries. They’ve avoided a major war in that time,
choosing to take over small systems one by one, first economically and
then politically. And where ever they take over, the populace are sent
to re-education camps to learn to be good little Shepherds. As such,
they make a nice bugaboo for 21st century blue-staters. It’s always
dangerous to guess an author’s views from a work of fiction, but I have
to believe that Modesitt doesn’t like or understand religion very well
(certainly, a sythesis of Islam and Mormonism strikes me as unlikely
in the extreme) and thinks that strong religious feeling is dangerous.
It’s telling that throughout the book we never really get to know any of
the Shepherds.

I digress again. None of the other major powers are willing to stand up
to the Shepherds; the last time any tried, the result was an enormously
bloody war that left both sides reeling (that story is told in
The Parafaith War). A man Commander Albert comes to esteem
highly has devoted his life to strengthening the smaller systems on which
the Shepherds feed so that they can avoid been swallowed, but reluctantly
comes to the conclusion that his best efforts are insufficient. The
Shepherds cannot be turned from their path by ordinary means; and so he
uses advanced alien technology to trigger a solar flare that renders the
main Shepherd system uninhabitable in a matter of hours. Billions of
Shepherd civilians lost their lives, both then and during the political
aftermath.

Later, Commander Albert determines that his home star-nation, the Taran
Republic, has become fascist, racist, xenophobic, and expansionist. His
home planet is known for being the most freethinking and friendly to the
arts in the entire Republic; it’s also the only one where gay marriage is
commonly accepted. (Albert himself has two fathers, a lawyer and an
opera singer.) As the fascists take control, Albert’s homeworld is
is brutally suppressed.

There’s an odd hint that the Taran Republic has become so through an
over-reliance on free market economics and soulless capitalism, which
frankly makes no sense to me; fascism breeds in bad economic times, not
prosperous times as indicated here. In Albert’s view, the Republic has
become just as corrupt and evil as the Shepherds at their worst.
Albert’s friend left behind a second solar-flare device…ought he to
stop the problem before it starts by destroying the Taran capital system?
And would doing so make him a horrible monster or a savior ensuring the
greatest good for the greatest number? As to the first question, he
eventually decides that he must. As the latter, you’ll have to decide
for yourself. Modesitt’s answer seems to be that Albert’s action is, if
not completely justifiable, at least understandable.

Frankly, I don’t think Modesitt makes his case. As I read it, it seemed
to me that the subtext was, “I don’t like free-market neo-cons, and I
don’t like religious fundamentalists; both kinds of people are
fundamentally flawed and since I can’t fix them and though it’s probably
wrong of me I wish I could just blow them all up.” I don’t know that
this is what he was thinking; but that’s the impression I got, and the
only explanation I can give for the general weakness of the book relative
to his usual standard is that political rancor got the better of him.

If there are any other Modesitt fans in the audience who think I’ve
misread the book, I’d be glad to hear from them. I read this during
the first week of a really nasty physician-mandated diet (think Atkins
with the good parts left out), and I was in rather a jaundiced mood.
But Modesitt doesn’t usually strike me this way.