I just noticed a new trend in my most current books: Heartstone: The Time Walker (waiting for cover art) and book 5 in the Dave Brewster Series, entitled The Accord (currently around 50% complete). While I am not a vegetarian or anything like that, both of those books raise questions about the morality of consuming other living things.

In both novels, the food of choice is other humans, which I hope we can all agree is totally disgusting. In the following paragraphs from Time Walker, the bad guy, Os, justifies his appetite for humans by comparing it to the desire to eat any kind of living food:

“You suck the life force out of others to keep yourself alive,” Baku replied. “That seems pretty horrible to me.”

 Os laughed at the thought. “You think you are so pure and innocent, but almost all life feeds on life. The tubers in this stew were alive until you ripped them from the ground and sliced them up. When you wish to eat meat, you slaughter the animal, gut it and cook it in a pot. You take life so you can extend your own, just like me. We are all guilty of the same crime, but my method is not so barbaric. On my new planet, there live six billion sentient Beings. I can survive by taking only a fraction of a second from each every day. Those creatures have natural lives around one hundred years long. My nourishment may cost them an hour or two. No one is killed and sliced into steaks for me.

That bit of dialogue hit the paper without me even thinking about the words. Afterward, I wondered where that choice of words came from. Is someone trying to tell me something? Well, I don’t really know, but it’s an interesting thought that carries forward into The Accord. The bad guys in that book are not as kind to their prey as Os. And other than those few words above, Os is not so kind himself, which you’ll see when the cover is available. Please let me know what you think? And I hope you check those books out when they become available. Thank you for joining the adventure!