Spoiler for like, any book existing.
I think mine has to be the villain in Mirror Man. Idk, he wasn’t intimidating, he wasn’t interesting. He was meh.
Also the villains from The Chain. Dear God they weren’t sympathetic in the slightest. The book tries to act like they were atleast pitiful but FROM THEIR INCEPTION, they were just evil assholes who enjoyed causing pain. The book itself wasn’t all that great anyways.
There is a character called “The CTHAEH” (pronounced “cath-ay”) in the book “The Wise Man’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss. I cannot fathom a more all-encompassing evil.
It is a creature that lives in a tree, intentionally isolated from the rest of creation. It is omniscient, and described as “poisonous, hateful and contagious. It can see all possible futures with perfect accuracy and clarity, branching out from a single moment. It uses this knowledge to cause the worst possible outcomes for as many people as possible. In doing so it often reveals information that will hurt and traumatize those who speak to it. It does so on purpose, since it is regarded as very cruel and malevolent.”
The evil lies in what it does in a simple conversation. It knows exactly what to say to you to cause a massively destructive chain reaction to begin within your own actions. Every person, creature, plant, you come into contact with becomes a vector for the chaos of the Ctheah. The insidiousness comes from you thinking you are making your own decisions. But because of the omniscience of the Ctheah, it knew that you would make these decisions, all endlessly branching out from the things it said to you in that single conversation. You have been unknowingly robbed of your free will and are carrying out the intentions of this creature throughout the world.
The Cthaeh really deserved a better series, what an incredible villain. Possibly the only high point in the books for me.
True! Though maybe it still will seeing as how we’ve only got 2/3 of this current series 🤣
Regardless, WHAT A CHARACTER RIGHT?!?! When I first read that I stopped to think of the consequences of the Cthaeh and the only metaphor I could come up with was like a small collision with a space satellite that cause another and another. Every piece becoming the possible destruction for something else, until the whole earth is shrouded by debris. I can’t imagine a more terrifying character.
Yes, exactly!!! It was the first moment in the series (I’m not the biggest fan, heh, though I do think it has some strong points!) where I felt actual emotional weight, and had a bit of a chill thinking about what, exactly, the Cthaeh had already influenced. What chain of events was Kvothe a part of, even before he got there?