Excellent Point on Unreliable Narrator

[Michael Bailey]

yes, well, violence in literature, it's like sex on tv, nothing like
the real thing and nothing really to object to per se, but the kid who
joins up even after seeing the Judge defame that nice evangelist and
admit it's a lie, and who hears the old preacher urge against war (for
some reason I picture this taking place in a bowling alley, but that
can't be right) but doesn't heed...
I didn't want to be like that kid, didn't want to go out pillaging
with the Judge, even in imagination, so I put the book down
(committing the sin of literalism, I guess)

no question that it's well written, maybe even designed to provoke
such a reaction, no doubt there is plenty to learn from it, but I
couldn't sit still for that lesson when I tried.  The judge may not be
a narrator, but he's an unreliable preacher, a creature built for war
and only ever victorious so far...at some point he will be defeated,
it may not happen in the book but a violent career lays out lines that
converge in a vanishing point and we will see what he has to say then!

"Death, thou too shalt die!"