Is stupid moral oversimplification necessary in a mass-market bestseller? E.g., Tolkien, Star Wars.
His Dark Materials is a possible counterexample.
I haven't read past the first book; but in the first book, the bad guys are really obscenely bad. Calling God a bad guy doesn't make it morally ambiguous, if God is really bad in the story.
Update: This post has also been superseded - new comments belong in the latest thread.
The second thread has now also exceeded 500 comments, so after 42 chapters of MoR it's time for a new thread.
From the first thread: