it is possible that I’m an asshole, but it is 2 0 1 7 and we’re still doing books where the main conflict is “mages/wizards/magic users are banned by an Oppressive Catholic Church analogue” and i am tired of it
So, with regard to The Armored Saint specifically, I will say –
It’s not a great book overall by any means, it’s all kinds of contemporary Extruded Fantasy Product trite and one of them is the thing you mention, but it redeems itself enormously at the very end with one big act of literary courage.
Spoiler under the cut:
The Oppressive Catholic Church analogue is completely right about its central ideological point. And I really, really, really did not expect that, not after the way it was portrayed and after the way its victims were portrayed.
The asshole templars go around beating people up, razing villages, forcing innocent bystanders to be complicit in their atrocities, etc., all in the name of hunting wizards. And they justify this with “if you do magic, eventually your eye will turn into a portal to Hell and demons will come out to destroy the world.”
The book goes to a lot of effort to make this sound like a bullshit excuse for being horrible to people. A simpleton babbles about wizardry and eye-portals because he’s disturbed and doesn’t know any better, and everyone in town knows it, but when the templars catch wind of it they end up forcing everyone in a neighboring village to help them murder everyone in that village in order to make a point about Not Tolerating Anything That Smacks of Magic. That kind of thing.
And then we meet this adorable wise woodsy ranger dude who generously offers a lot of help to our disaffected protagonist girl, oh and by the way he’s been persecuted for being gay (which is like the single most reliable morality trigger for a modern F/SF audence), and hey! he knows magic! he does magic a lot! it’s totally safe, and he’ll teach some to our heroine!
…and then there’s a crisis, and the ranger dude digs deep down to do a mighty work of magic that will save the day…
…and his eye turns into a portal to hell, and a super-powerful demon comes out, bent on destroying the world.
I have respect for that.