3 quoted lines
Josh Levitan wrote:
When Jahlee(? I've had
about five hours of sleep in the past few days, so my memory's a little hazy at this point, and a marathon reading session didn't help, but I'm pretty sure it was Jahlee and not Fava) is asked by Horn what the inhumi who fed on the Neighbors would have been like, she says "Wonderful," or something to that effect.
I found the passage. It's actually Fava and not Jahlee, and her exact reply is "'I've wondered about that. It must have been marvelous. Miraculous...For them [the inhumi], I mean.'" (214) She seems to be referring to the powers the inhumi would have acquired from the Neighbors, not to any moral improvement, and the context of the conversation supports this (Horn goes on to suggest that present-day inhumi may have retained a trace of these powers). And if Horn is correct in his conjecture (and so far it is only a conjecture) that the Neighbors enslaved the inhumi, the inhumi would be unlikely to remember the Neighbors as especially benevolent or spiritual, although they seem that way to us.
--Adam
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.