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Ironclad:
My point was exactly that
with the suspension of disbelief towards all nonhuman sentient races having human characteristics regardless of whether it makes sense (and I would propose that, once you realise how heavily humans anthropomorphise things, that suspension of disbeleif is crucial for many if not most fantasy settings), the rest more or less falls into place.
(As with most any fantasy series, if you prod too hard for answers you're eventually going to run into something where we throw up are hands and say, "look, it's magic, okay?")
And turning a
fictional species into an allegory is not diminishing it. I mean, you can do plenty of insensitive things with fictional species and characters, sure, but saying that something made up for the sake of a story is portrayed oversimply, is nonsensical (unless there's prior background establishing a richer context for that thing, of course).
I mean, it's fine if you don't like the series. Heck, I'm surprised I'm even still reading this myself (though I liked the last two chapters much better than most). But saying that a fantasy story is necessarily bad because it's elements don't follow scientific principles (e.g. social needs stemming from evolution) is... And, I mean, he has magical status screens... =_=; That ship has sailed.