Characters who FAIL ETHICS FOREVER can still be entertaining. For example, plenty of villains clearly have little regard for ethics. Authors who FAIL ETHICS FOREVER are usually less desirable. For example, Terry Goodkind. I've rarely felt personally insulted by a work of fiction, but, well, Naked Empire somehow managed to contain the purest, unadulterated essence of Ethics Fail I've ever encountered - it even managed to contradict the explicit moral lessons of the earlier books in the series!