The goal of the book is to challenge some of the myths that currently dominate our culture and permeate the existing fantasy literature. I see this as an essential ingredient of social transformation - to change the cultural story that informs our beliefs and decisions and that we impress on our children.

The most prominent of these myths is the good-evil duality. This is the central theme of the book. It is tackled by drawing a sharp distinction between good and evil, as is done in other works from the genre, and then gradually chipping away at it until the reader is left to question whether the sharp distinction is anything more than a product of perspective.

The following secondary themes are also briefly covered:

• The futility of looking to deities to solve our problems. We have both the power and the responsibility to solve them ourselves.
• The value of trying to emulate the most cherished qualities of our heroes instead of developing personality cults around them.
• The value of looking at history critically in order to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors, rather than abusing history to justify their decisions and those of our contemporaries.
• The importance of growing in wisdom to counterbalance the inevitable growth in power.