It is emphatically true that it can ALWAYS GET WORSE. And I'm not sure I was reading much as a kid that was better, exactly . . . (except Laurence Yep. ALWAYS ALL THE HEARTS FOR LAURENCE YEP.)

I mean -- from a baseline humanism perspective, "people are all people and let's not kill people about stupid things" isn't a bad message, but these are books for grown-ups and they just don't really acknowledge how infinitely more complicated everything is than that.