Heh, you have a point. The reason I linked to my own subreddit at the end is that I'm slowly trying to build it up as a place for like-minded people to discuss fantasy books. I'm probably going to take a break from Reddit for awhile (for reasons unrelated to the matter at hand), but posting on r/bookscirclejerk is definitely an interesting suggestion.

I mean, sure, there are more ways to address an issue than have characters pontificate about it, especially if it's a "fact of life" in your setting that's meant to cause values dissonance with the audience. But what bothered me in this particular story involves something that isn't typical (in fact, some characters do view it as an abomination, but they're hypocritical background villains who aren't given any depth) and classic sci-fi novellas (which is essentially what Sanderson wrote, whether he calls it fantasy or not) are all about pontificating over moral issues.

I think I get what you're saying now (and I'm sorry you're getting downvoted for it). There's a limit to how much ground you can cover in a story, especially a short one. But I feel that some things cry out to be addressed if they're included--a bit like Chekhov's Gun, but applied to themes. I don't necessarily want the author to tell me "AI bad!," but if they're going to have their protagonist play God, I think that's a really serious matter and deserves to be examined at least a little bit. What bothered me wasn't that I dislike the outcome (I'm not entirely sure that I would morally condemn it), what bothered me was that the main character does something that's inherently a Big Deal and there's little serious thought given to it. To use a better analogy than Moby Dick, it'd be like having a story where the protagonist kills someone to achieve a goal, but barely discussing whether it was justified or not either before or after doing it. It might have been justified, it might not have been, and there might be an interesting debate to be had about that, but what you can't do is just ignore it.

(To deflate all this, it was pointed out to me in another thread that I didn't interpret the story quite right in the first place--the nature of the magic in the story forces the artificial soul to be extremely similar to the original. I think the story would still be improved by having the characters spend more time thinking about whether creating an artificial soul is justified, or whether they should make any changes to it at all, but they're not really creating a whole new person in the first place, which makes it a less serious matter than I had perceived it to be, and thus not as essential to address.)

You're definitely right that the two stories can't be compared one-to-one. Shai has very little agency because of her circumstances, and she never would have attempted to do something so insane on her own initiative. But what bothers me is that the narrative focuses much more on how she's creating a great work of art than examining moral questions it implicitly raises. She questions how much she should change him (which is constrained by the practical limitation that the fake soul won't work if she changes it too much), but the question of whether or not it's moral to create a fake soul at all is barely addressed--only the self-righteous members of the oppressive regime really feel that way, and they hypocritically ignore their moral compunctions in favor of political convenience.

She does do some thinking about it, which is good and kept me from passing even harsher judgement. But as you say, she wrestles with the ethics of how much she should tweak the personality--not so much the fact that she is playing God by getting involved in fabricating a soul in the first place. And in the end, she feels justified in doing so.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not bothered that it raised ethical issues--I'm bothered that it doesn't really engage with them. Imagine if Moby Dick ended with Ahab killing the whale and going home in triumph--it would be kind of like that.